The boys’ choir wasn’t making things up. They were singing an actual composition, which is usually misidentified as Rossini’s cat duet.
The composition is “Duetto buffo di due gatti” (Humorous duet for two cats), a popular performance piece for two sopranos which is often performed as a concert encore. The “lyrics” consist entirely of the repeated word “miau” or “meow”. Sometimes it is also performed by a soprano and a tenor, or a soprano and a bass.
The piece is usually and mistakenly attributed to the great Italian composer Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868). But the composer of “cat duet” is said to be Robert Lucas de Pearsall, using the pseudonym G. Berthold, who wrote the piece in 1825, drawing principally from Rossini’s 1816 opera, Otello.
H/t FOTM’s silent reader CSM
~Éowyn
