I'm glad you're getting all whipped up for the premiere of this season's Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Saturday! Yeah!

Aren't you?

The idea that a profitable chunk of humanity can be induced to watch a live classical-music event on a regular basis is astonishing. For four years, this annual series of events has gathered an ever-larger audience, stretching both the audience's size and demographic spread.

The debut Met show, a new staging of "Tosca," may receive an uptick in watchers simply due to the boos it's been getting since it opened on Sept. 21. Note: despite the buzz about traditional stagings versus Regietheater, this happens every time a long-running beloved production of an opera classic takes place.

It's happened at the Met before - Graham Vick's reviled "Il Trovatore" bombed there in 2000 and was never revived. The now-fondly-remembered Zeffirelli productions they replace were scorned in their day as monstrously detailed dioramas. Fanatics, even arts-loving ones, are consistent in resistance to change. Now we want opera singers who are young, thin, attractive, who can move and look good doing it. And perhaps who can act a little as well.

Think of how much more fun we might have if we took Terry Jones' example. The Monty Python great told us two years ago that his favorite sketch to write concerned classical music.

"It was having Sviatoslav Richter doing the Warsaw Concerto. He's got on six padlocks and a straightjacket, and he's rolling onto the set in a sack, struggling to get free. And his hand extends from the sack, and he hits the opening chord, just in time - BAM!"

(It was done with Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto in B flat major in Episode 28 of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" on Oct. 26, 1972 -- and Richter is shod only in "a sack, three padlocks, and a pair of handcuffs.")

The gleeful crashing together of high and low culture is so exuberant, and, well, Jonesian that it reveals the raw showmanship behind live performance of any level of complexity, degrading it while illuminating its show-offy tight-assedness.

That stuffiness is the primary way American film plays off of classical music, and accounts for the success of classical-music comedians such as Victor Borge, Anna Russell and Peter Schickele (aka P.D.Q. Bach). Here's a brief rundown of our most indelible classical-music moments in popular culture:

You're Darn Tootin' (1928) Dir: Edgar Kennedy. Stan Laurel had the stage experience and the endlessly inventive wit. Oliver Hardy had the ineffable grace of the comic foil, a balletic pratfaller. They skewer the idea of music as a cooperative venture in this short, in which the boys decimate a public concert and then fail miserably as street musicians to boot. Even though it's a silent, the crisp rhythms communicate what's happening musically to perfection.

A Night at the Opera (1935) Dir: Sam Wood, Edmund Goulding. When the Marx Brothers moved to MGM, wunderkind producer Irving Thalberg neutered their image - turning them from anarchists into angels. Instead of insulting any- and everything, Groucho, Chico and Harpo foil the villains and help the young couple, who, unhelpfully, bring the movie to a standstill when they sing. This is their last really strong film, and they deflate the pretense of the situation with ease. (As the crazy old gypsy woman Azucena intones "Stride la vampa," Groucho responds, "Boogey! Boogey! Boogey!") Skip the slow parts and enjoy.

A Corny Concerto (1943) Dir: Robert Clampett. Looney Tunes, indeed. Warner Brothers' thumb in Disney's eye uses two Johann Strauss II waltzes to mock the conventions of "Fantasia," released three years earlier. Elmer Fudd gets the Deems Taylor part, complete with a recalcitrant starched shirt front and falling pants. Although Disney pioneered the choreographed-to-music cartoon, Warners was vastly better at it - see 1941's "Rhapsody in Rivets" and 1946's "Rhapsody Rabbit" as well.

Long-Haired Hare (1949) Dir: Chuck Jones. It's Bugs vs. Giovanni Jones, the temperamental tenor. When Bugs wreaks his revenge, he does so in the guise of the venerated conductor of "Fantasia," Leopold Stokowski.

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