jan 1, 1900 - First version of flight of the bumblebee I Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

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"Flight of the Bumblebee" is an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, composed in 1899–1900. Its composition is intended to musically evoke the seemingly chaotic and rapidly changing flying pattern of a bumblebee. Despite the piece being a rather incidental part of the opera, it is today one of the more familiar classical works because of its frequent use in popular culture (in Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, and many others as stated).‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ is a notoriously difficult piece of music, with a very quick tempo. The work comes at the end of Act III, Tableau 1, as the magic swan changes the Tsar’s son into an insect so that he can visit his father who does not know that he’s alive.

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