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Welcome to the Carnival of the Animals, the celebration of life! When the world of musicians meets the world of animals, no stone is left unturned! Whether lions or chickens, donkeys or turtles, everyone is here—even fossils stand up again. Sing, dance, and guess along with us!

Composer Camille Saint-Saëns delights the whole family with this hit of classical music. And he didn’t even want the notes to be published during his lifetime! In 1886, he wrote the suite for fun, by the way, in a small village in Austria. Saint-Saëns was afraid for his reputation as a “serious” composer, which is why The Carnival of the Animals was not published until 1922. Little did he know that this piece would bring him more global fame than any of his other works.

Generations of children and adults have been delighted by Saint-Saëns’ original way of turning animal sounds into music. For classical music enthusiasts, he also hid some ironic Easter eggs: for example, in The Elephant, he quotes Berlioz, and in The Fossils, he references Rossini.

For the celebration, the piano duo of the Salzburg Philharmonic is joined by: dancer and acrobat Lisa Moon, who dances to the music of The Swan; actress and singer Katharina Gudmundsson, who narrates through the music; and pianists Emese Wilhelmy and Minka Popovič, who play the piano.