Five years ago, the Waltham-based radio station WCRB, one of the largest commercial classical stations in the country, realized a shift in its demographics. " The trend has been for a lot of people to get their careers started [first] and have kids later in life, " notes ’CRB marketing director George Dudley. " So we have a growing audience of families. " Looking for a family-oriented event to sink its teeth into, the station conceived the Classical Cartoon Festival, which brings a platoon of area youth orchestras to Symphony Hall for an all-day line-up of performances, games, workshops, and screenings of classic Warner Bros. cartoons that make use of the classical repertoire. This year’s event, which takes place next Saturday, includes heavyweight Boston Philharmonic conductor Ben Zander taking up the baton at the head of the New England Conservatory’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra for Peter and the Wolf, the Boston Children’s Theatre performing scenes from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and, of course, lots of cartoons — including " What’s Opera, Doc?, " a seven-minute ode that’s become almost as famous as the music it spoofs.

Widely considered to be among the greatest cartoons ever made, this classic Looney Tunes short, a deft, daft Wagner parody starring Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny (in drag as Brünnhilde) and featuring the immortal aria " Kill the Wabbit, " was released to theaters in 1957. It was directed by Warner Bros. legend Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese, an animator who became one of Warner Bros. top story writers. Between 1946 and 1958, when he worked exclusively for Warner Bros., mostly in tandem with Jones, Maltese (1908-1981) was responsible for the creation of such characters as the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote and Yosemite Sam. But he’s probably best remembered for " What’s Opera, Doc? " , which came on the heels of 1946’s " Rhapsody Rabbit " (in which Bugs plays a concert pianist), 1948’s " Back Alley Oproar " (in which Sylvester the Cat wakes Elmer Fudd with his renditions of arias), and 1950’s " Rabbit of Seville, " in which Bugs and Elmer took on Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. So identified is Maltese with these works that when his papers were archived by the University of Wyoming, his collection of opera albums was catalogued right alongside his journals and his animation stills.

" What’s Opera, Doc? " has spawned an unusual amount of scholarship for a cartoon — you can find purists who claim it isn’t as funny as Chuck Jones’s other work, and you can find close readers who wonder whether it doesn’t reveal that Bugs was, all along, a castrato. But classical fans and the ’toon faithful, who may not see eye to eye on much these days, still have their admiration of Bugs in common. The ending of " What’s Opera, Doc? " is familiar to almost anyone who spent a few hours in front of a television on Saturday mornings any time in the past half-century: Elmer Fudd at long last appears to have succeeded in killing the wabbit. " What have I done? " he groans. " Poor little bunny. Poor little wabbit. " He picks up the corpse. The audience is in shock. And then, addressing the camera as only Bugs can, the wabbit sneers, " Well, what did you expect in an opera: a happy ending? "

Of course, there’s been a series of happy endings for " What’s Opera, Doc? " In 1992, the Library of Congress’s National Film Preservation Board added it to the National Film Registry, ensuring its protection alongside such important film documents as Citizen Kane and the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination. In some ways it seems the hallmark of another time, one in which an adult moviegoing audience might reasonably have been expected to know Die Walküre; now, if adults recognize the second part of Wagner’s Ring cycle, it’s probably either as the napalm-bombing soundtrack from Apocalypse Now or as, well, " Kill the Wabbit. " The Classical Cartoon Festival, as Dudley points out, is aimed at a captive audience that includes both the parents of youth-orchestra members and the children of ’CRB listeners. For the kids, at least, the music behind the toons is reinforced by the sight of their musicmaking peers on stage. " It makes it more accessible, " Dudley says. " They can imagine themselves doing it. "

WCRB’s fifth annual Classical Cartoon Festival runs next Saturday, April 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston. Admission is $6 to benefit the Massachusetts Brain Injury Association; call (617) 266-1200.

BY CARLY CARIOLI