Abdulla Bulbul Amir

Written in 1875 by Irish composer Percy French, this music hall song is the fanciful story of Turkish Prince Abdulla Bulbul Amir and Russian Count Ivan Skavinksi Skavar, whose puffed-up vanity and boasting gets them into a duel with proves mutually fatal. It became so popular it achieved the status of a folk song with hundreds of variants all over the world. This version here is pared down as much as I could, limiting it to a mere five-ish minutes. Seriously, it could go on for hours, like a Wagnerian opera.