Okay … so I know I should be the one who answers this myself but …
In the classic Disney short “The Band Concert” the title page of the score Mickey is directing reads “Selections from Zampa.” However, the next page reads “William Tell Overture” by Rossini, which is what they begin to play. So my questions are:
1: Who (if anybody) was Zampa?
2: Was there any connection between Rossini and Zampa that would explain this discepancy or was this just a blooper on the part of Disney?
Zampa is an opera by Ferdinand Herold (early 1800’s). Herold wrote a few successful operas for the French comic opera (opera comique). Eventually, opera comique was Italianized by the likes of Rossini. With Guillaume Tell and Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), among others, he surpassed and embarassed the French composers of the time.
Just my humble opinion, but I don’t think Herold had anything to be embarrassed about. A compilation of Leonard Bernstein’s Favorite Overtures included the one from Zampa. It is quite a tasty little piece.
You’ve probably heard the overture to Zampa in other old cartoons. There are a number of operas and operettas of that period that are completely forgotten, except for their overtures.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
I’ve played the overture to Zampa a time or two; like other pieces of that era, it’s great fun. Considered one of the “barn burners” of concert band transcriptions, like . . . oh, the William Tell Overture.
