73: Operatic Overtures

The next form I want to talk about is the overture. This isn’t a “form” per se, but it’s an important-enough fixture in a whole host of different musical applications that it merits a discussion now. I want to start out with this recording of the Impresario Overture (the overture to “the Impresario”—a Mozart opera about opera; the singers, stage crew, opera house management, composer, public, and so on, and the vanity of the performers); I played the overture in high school, so I chose it (rather than the overture to something far more famous—Don Giovanni, the Magic Flute, etc.) both for that reason and to give it its due time in the spotlight alongside the heavyweights.

MOZART : Impresario Overture K.486 (SLOVAK SINFORNIETTA ORCHESTRA) - YouTube

Concerts in Mozart’s day were far more raucous affairs than they are today (a close comparison might be, for example, a modern Taylor Swift concert—full of in-venue eating and drinking, laughing, talking, and many other things that are taking away from giving the concert the listener’s full attention, during the concert itself). In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for people to show up to concerts while eating and drinking (or showing up already drunk), laughing about anything with their friends, with whom they were going to play cards, or gamble by some other means—all in the venue. (Remember that, for example, in early 1805, the Eroica would have been as new to audiences as “The Life of A Showgirl” would have been in the last few months of 2025.)

Partly because of this (and the need to tell everyone somehow “be quiet! I’m an important composer and you paid money to be here to listen to my music, so stop doing whatever else you’re doing and pay attention up here!”), and partly to set the tone for the whole work from a 30,000-foot-view, composers often start cantatas (where they’re called “Sinfonias” most of the time—the precursor to the modern symphony), dance suites (where they could also be called “preludes”), and operas (where they’re almost exclusively called “overtures”) with grand statements like you heard in the Impresario recording.

Even in modern times (just look at this recording from 2021: The Impressario by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), audiences need reminders that the performance is about to start. The audience in this recording, for example, claps throughout almost all of the first phrase of the overture. (The phrase actually repeats; it is not merely repeated because the performer now has the audience’s attention and decided to start over.)

Almost every opera has one of these, whether it was written at a time when modern classical concert etiquette was established or not, and, in many cases, the overture is in the running for the most famous section in the whole of the opera.

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