It was the very first cartoon to air on Cartoon Network back when that channel premiered in October 1992.
It was accused of plagiarizing the Tom and Jerry short "The Cat Concerto", since both were released at around the same time, both center on a pianist being bugged by a mouse while playing Franz Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2", some of the same gags are used, and the cartoons visually resemble each other. MGM and Warner Brothers accused each other of plagiarism. To this day, no one knows who ripped off whom, or whether this was a deliberate act of plagiarism or just a coincidence. Friz Freleng himself insisted that the latter was the case, because Technicolor, who was already swamped with work, accidentally sent finished footage of "Rhapsody Rabbit" to MGM. When they saw that Warner Bros. was making a similar cartoon, they rushed "The Cat Concerto" to its completion and put that short up for Oscar consideration.
Trivia Tropes:
Creator Backlash: According to one of Friz Freleng's daughters, Freleng grew to hate this cartoon, primarily because for years when people brought it up they could only comment how it seemed to plagiarize the Tom & Jerry short The Cat Concerto, or that Cat Concerto plagiarized Rhapsody Rabbit. That said, in a 1990 interview, made for the He's 50, Folks magazine, celebrating Bugs Bunny's 50th anniversary, Freleng cited Rhapsody Rabbitas his favorite Bugs Bunny short, so clearly he warmed up to it eventually. It probably helped that by 1990, the controversy had died down, even if it is still a subject of interested amongst animation fans.
