A Parisian choir made their audience howl with laughter when two young boys, Régis Mengus and Hyacinthe de Moulins, took center stage, lending their pitch-perfect voices to a piece composed entirely of cat meows.

Their viral performance glazes a rare dash of comedy over the world of classical music, amassing over 8.1 million YouTube views to date while bewitching fans across the globe. Music Man readers can catch a glimpse of the magic in the video below…

A piano, solemnly played by Rodolphe Pierrepont, leads this piece, with one child singer soon lining its slow progression with a surprisingly realistic cat ‘meow,’ sung in perfect harmony with the instrument. It’s not merely the choir boy’s prodigious voice that makes this clip so great – it’s his sharp, almost ominous tone, ingeniously styled like an angry cat, which gets the audience softly chuckling to the absurd performance unfolding before them.

When the second singer breaks into his own set of melodic meows, the audience can’t contain themselves any longer, breaking their usual, all-serious silence and erupting in their own symphony of laughter.

The two boys’ austere and unwavering expressions only make their duet more cackle-worthy, as they replace all human language with meows as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. And fans of this viral clip were quick to pick up on their hidden talents, with one top commenter writing, “I applaud these kids for performing this piece with straight faces. I don’t know how I’d keep from laughing if it were me.”

Before long, Régis and Hyacinthe are interweaving their dramatic meows, each jaw-dropping vocal run highlighting the differences between their unique voices so that it truly sounds like two cats, meowing to the moon on a back garden fence. After a near-chaotic final meow from the first choir singer, the camera pans to reveal their audience – children, parents, and elder music fans – all smitten, smiling bright and enthusiastically applauding the unexpected cat duet.

But the boys have one final encore to give: a speed-run section which illumines their true talent as vocalists, the duo gliding through arpeggiated scales in a fresh series of meows, before finishing in absolute harmony.

Curious as to what this cat choir piece truly is? “Duetto buffo di due gatti” – which translates as, “Funny duet for two cats” – can, in some respects, be traced back to the Italian opera and chamber music composer, Gioachino Rossini. However, its true origins remain a bit of a mystery, with some scholars positing that the 1825 composition was penned by another, unknown, composer who was simply inspired by another Rossini piece, titled, “Otello.”

This viral rendition was performed by Les Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Bois (a.k.a. The Little Singers of Paris, or literally, The Little Singers of the Wooden Cross), back in 1996. And, despite 30 years having passed since this performance occurred, fans remain enchanted by the choir’s stellar mix of comedy and classical music professionalism.

As one top commenter wrote, “If only all cats sounded like these two, my neighborhood would be heavenly at night,” another picked out precisely what makes this operatic set so great, commenting, “Some people don’t understand English, some Russian, but this is the perfect piece because, get this… nobody understands cat.”

Régis Mengus and Hyacinthe de Moulins — backed by Rodolphe Pierrepont and the Parisian choir — delivered a hilariously uncanny rendition of a piece sung entirely in cat meows. It’s a delightful reminder that classical music can still surprise.