Your six Favourite Overtures......all by different composers please.

[salymap]

Something to cheer the dark days perhaps - it's up to you.

[Boilk]

Offenbach's La Belle Hélène and something by Sullivan - both great tunesmiths.
Egmont would have to be in there I guess.

[MrGongGong]

This one for me

[amateur51]

This one for me

Brilliant stuff!

I promise that this story is true ... I was at a poorly attended performance of Le Grande Macabre being given at English National Opera. The overture began as above, the next person to me, about four seats away shot bolt upright, leaned across to me and hissed "Is this Don Giovanni?!"

I shook my head and he fled

Missed a good evening

[John Shelton]

Monteverdi, the instrumental toccata that begins L'Orfeo

Telemann, Overture in E minor Tafelmusik Book 1

Beethoven, Leonora no 3 (though I like 2 a great deal. Egmont and Coriolan aren't bad either ).

Weber, Oberon

Mendelssohn, The Hebrides

Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Musique pour les soupers du roi Ubu (sort of overture, Dada parallel to Telemann).

(I haven't included any Wagner because i don't think of them as overtures).

[Serial_Apologist]

This one for me

Was it Frank Zappa who first used car horns for fanfare purposes? In "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" (1968) iirc.

Overtures? Can only think of one, Rawsthorne's "Street Corner"

[cloughie]

Here's my 6 - all of which I got to know and love from great Decca LPs in the 60s.

Mendelssohn: Midsummer Night's Dream (LSO Maag)
Cherubini: Anacreon (VPO Munchinger)
Nicolai: Merry Wives of Windsor (VPO Boskovsky)
Smetana: Bartered Bride (IPO Kertesz)
Glinka:Russlan & Ludmilla (LSO Solti)
Borodin: Prince Igor Ov (LSO Solti)

[aeolium]

Handel - Alexander's Feast

Mozart - Die Zauberflöte

Beethoven - The Consecration of the House

Rossini - Semiramide

Mendelssohn - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Nielsen - Maskerade

[Sir Velo]

Ah, the 19th century orchestral showpiece compositional mode par excellence!

Russian Easter Festival
Fingal's Cave
Der Freischutz (Oberon, a very close 2nd)
Le Carnaval Romain (just pips Le Corsaire)
Le Gazza Ladra (a whisker ahead of Cenerentola & Guillaume Tell)
Egmont (closely followed by Coriolan & Leonore III)

And one for the C20th: Johannesburg Festival

[rauschwerk]

Berlioz: Le Corsaire
Borodin: Prince Igor
Britten: An Occasional Overture
Dvorak: Otello (perhaps more of a tone poem but there it is)
Dyson: At the Tabard Inn
Walton: Portsmouth Point

[John Shelton]

Monteverdi, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjpFi9bn1do

Telemann https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZv7C01MHZ4

Beethoven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56fnRnDQMT8

Weber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYr8WTg4lD8

Mendelssohn, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcogD-hHEYs

Bernd Alois Zimmermann, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPde80v-af0

[Keraulophone]

Glinka - Russlan and Ludmilla

Beethoven - Leonora No 3

Arnold - Leonora No 4

Mendelssohn - Ruy Blas

Elgar - Cockaigne (In London Town)

Rossini - The Thieving Magpie

[salymap]

Ov.Yeomen of the Guard -Sullivan

Humperdinck -Prelude/overture to Hansel and Gretel

Dvorak Carnival

Elgar - Cockaigne

Arnold - A grand,grand overture

[salymap]

Ov.Yeomen of the Guard -Sullivan

Humperdinck -Prelude/overture to Hansel and Gretel

Dvorak Carnival

Elgar - Cockaigne

Arnold - A grand,grand overture

Mozart Marriage of Figaro

[Sir Velo]

Arnold - Leonora No 4

For those who don't know