What's Opera, Arnold?

When I was a kid, one of my favorite tv shows was Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold! I watched it almost every night, and loved it to bits. The sarcasm, the metaphor, the outrageous storylines! Okay, when I was nine I didn't necessarily get all that, but I still loved the show.

One night, to my immense glee, they did an episode on opera. In it, Arnold's class is taken to see Carmen, and several key members fall asleep and dream up their own versions of it. And it is hilarious. There's so much music involved: Leoncavallo, Mozart, Wagner, Rossini, and of course, Bizet. I remember my parents watching it with us, crying with laughter, and not getting quite why it was so funny, beyond the antics of the characters. Now I know they were laughing at the way the music was used (this show is also to be blamed for the fact that whenever I hear the Carmen overture, I think, "Fight! Fight! Fight!"). As I grew up and studied more music, I'd occasionally come across pieces and recognize them from the show. The same is true for my little sister. We were chilling in my room last year, listening to Kaufmann on YouTube, and Vesti la giubba came on. "Hey," she said, interested, "that was in Hey Arnold!"