Dance of the Hours

Dance of the Hours (Italian: Danza delle ore) is a short ballet and is the act 3 finale of the opera La Gioconda composed by Amilcare Ponchielli.

[1][2] It became even more widely known after its inclusion in the 1940 Walt Disney animated film Fantasia where it is depicted as a comic ballet featuring ostriches, hippopotamuses, elephants and alligators.

The ballet, accompanied by an orchestra, appears at the end of the third act of the opera, in which the character Alvise, who heads the Inquisition, receives his guests in a large and elegant ballroom adjoining the death chamber.

The transition point between the two episodes, where it marks the birth of the day, coincides with the intervention in fortissimo of the chorus ("Prodigio!

A brief diminuendo precedes the attacca of the final coda in A major, a vigorous can-can in the manner of Romualdo Marenco's Ballo Excelsior [it] (1881), introduced by an abrupt change of tempo to allegro vivacissimo.