This was at the Last Night of the Proms in 1996 (I was there). The joke is that Felicity Lott is a Dame (female equivalent of "Sir") and received an enormous bunch of flowers, whereas Ann Murray is a mere "Miss" and received a tiny posey - hence the (completely staged!) "cattiness" between the two of them. The piece was not listed on the programme, but was clearly not impromptu.

I think i've manually repeated this vid more than 50 time now and still couldnt get enough of this :)

I have four cats and this is 100% accurate.

OMG, when Flott hisses.

I never tire of watching this. A wonderful performance by two amazing ladies.

One by of my favourite KZfaq moments!

Wonderful. The best one ever for me. The composer of this piece of fun, was Robert Lucas Pearsall. An English composer who wrote this as a tribute to Rossini, and in the style of Rossini. Hence the fact that most people think that Rossini wrote this. They didn't. But it was performed within his lifetime. That makes this a very special piece of music.

The performance was a delight to experience.

❤❤❤Amazing performance...only "meow" is the lyrics but the story is there..such a great theatrical performance🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤

My golden retriever used to adore listening to sopranos sing once a month at a Columbus, Ohio market. The male voices didn't seem to move her too much, but she would sit up enthralled for the sopranos. I requested this piece once and one of them sang part of it to Copper. I wish that I'd had a camera with me to film it.

Adorable duo... both the ladies & the song ❤❤ 😂🤣

That part at 1:38 is just perfect. Precise harmony and great reverb.

i get it. the contrast of the colors represent happy and sad. it reflects in their voices as well

...how clever of them to be able of to playact like this with their wonderful voices. Sheer fun!

Simply brilliant... :0)x Meeeoooooowwww indeed ladies, you are both awesome....

I was there (Proms at the Albert Hall, early 2000's I think). It brought the house down, of course. There was a running gag from earlier on in the evening.

Fabulous singing and marvellous this interpretation !

Great fun, great sports and great singing!

One of the most delightful renditions I have seen

Best version I've ever seen. Still trying to work out what the exact magic is here - so many smaller things all added up make it just so...extra brilliant - the scene is set, (not just a sketch out of nowhere), it's a little story, not just a conversation where the only word is 'miaow', the voices contrast, there is already a fantastic, playful atmosphere in the room and most of all, the amazing dramatic singers are clearly having a ball. Sure I've missed something, but off the top of my head, those things stood out. Bravissimo! xx

What a delightful performance.

You can look into the "Oyseaulx" (ancient french orthography for "oiseaux", "birds") from the french renaissance composer Clément Janequin. The best version I know is the one from the Ensemble Clément Janequin, you'll find it on Spotify. In other Janequin's descriptive songs like "La Chasse" ("The Hunt") or "Les Cris de Paris" ("The Calls of Paris"), you will find imitations of dog's "noises" (for example, 'gnof gnof' for the running dogs), etc.

hope to sing this one day in public

Cats are exactly what come to mind when I hear the music of Boulez, Babbitt and Feldman, except that they're walking on pianos.

Bravo, superb!

I have sung this, good fun but very tricky.

Oh, wow! Best one I've ever seen! How have I not seen this before?

Thing is, you can quite clearly hear that they are super enjoying themselves many singers wouldn’t touch this piece for humiliation, these two obviously don’t care

Wonderful!

The best performance by far!!! :-)

Great to see such humour in the Proms.

FABULEUX . MERCI A VOUS MESDAMES .

Great rendition. Loved it.

Have seen this performance inth Sydney Opera House with the late Dame Joan Sutherland and Kiri te Kanawa. Talk about hilarious was an understatement. Even the woman in the audience joined in. Totally hilarious

So cute.

Meeeoooow...how good was that?

To Mel King, I know there is an amazing work created by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), called Carnaval des Animaux. I have listened to several pieces out of this musical gem, but I don't seem to remember vocal parts except for the narrator. Peter and the Wolf by Prokofjev has instruments imitating animals as well,

FABULEUX ? MERCI A VOUS MESDAMES .

Felicity Lott stayed with us some years ago.

just amazing *·* lovie it¡¡(L)

Whole new meaning to cat fight

Fab u lous

Dame Felicity the cat who got the cream!!

I seriously want to know what was Rossini was thinking when he wrote this piece!😄❤️

Miiiiiiiiiiiiiau!

Show

Omg is that Pavarotti?!

Chouette le devoir de musique

Barry Hanson would really Love 'tis why because its Deee~melted by Russ ALLGier

The singing is unbeatable, as one might expect. The "Inzenierung" was too annectodic to be taken into account. Great performance, thou.

Last night of the Proms?

ann murry singing opera? that's a first

Claws out.

AMAZING!!!!!!*******!!!!!! UTUBE SMILE BY JOHN BAVAS

Do you have a sense of humor? It's a famous piece, has been sung by many a great singer, and they are supposed to sound cat-like not beautiful. Also, this is clearly a classical music concert, and I seriously doubt the audience are "pseuds".

funny to hear. but... difficult enough to sing

Hahha

Batterie trop faible pour tout regarder ce soir

@1:35 Someone in the audience should have barked like a dog.

I'm so sorry you have no sense of humour. There seems to be a whole audience full of "pseuds" and many composers, including Bach, Beethoven and Mozart wrote the occasional musical joke.

Bloody awful. The sort of thing that gets classical music a bad name and is loved by all the pseuds.