'Goat edition' meme hits classical music and Mozart

An internet meme (previously targeting One Direction, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and more) where music videos of pop songs are interspersed with clips of goats screaming has found its latest victim - Mozart's 'Queen Of The Night' aria.

Mozart's 'Queen of the Night' aria from The Magic Flute has gone the way of Justin Bieber, One Direction, Taylor Swift and others - a 'Goat edition' of the song has surfaced online, using a Royal Opera House production of the opera.



The 'Goat edition' meme has seen popular chart songs manipulated so that certain snippets of the song are replaced with footage and sound of a goat (or sheep) screaming like a human. It stems from a separate internet meme where footage of goats screaming like humans are compiled and posted online.

In the Mozart goat version (which actually features a sheep) it's still possible to hear much of the vocal acrobatics, but the phrase-ending F natural and D natural in the most famous section have been replaced with the goat screams, as well as the C natural in the line "meine Tochter nimmermehr."



The 'Queen of the Night' aria is one of the most famous Mozart works and an enduring standard for operatic sopranos. It's not the first time goats and opera have crossed over - goats take a central role in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and Cilea's L'Arlesiana, in which a whole aria is dedicated to a courageous goat.

The Royal Opera House will be staging a full version of the opera in April (without goats).

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