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

[LeMartinPecheur]

Don't think anyone's mentioned Bernstein's Candide yet. Shurely shome mishtake as it's clearly R3's most popular?

[salymap]

Has anyone chosen Wolf-Ferrari - Susanna's Secret? It used to be very popular, also haven't seen William Tell. And Mendelssohn Calm Sea

And Elgar - In the South? and Rossini La Gazza Ladra ?

Perhaps they would have looked better in a proper list but logging off.

[Tony Halstead]

Don't think anyone's mentioned Bernstein's Candide yet. Shurely shome mishtake as it's clearly R3's most popular?

I did indeed, in message #47!

[EdgeleyRob]

Has anyone chosen Wolf-Ferrari - Susanna's Secret? It used to be very popular, also haven't seen William Tell. And Mendelssohn Calm Sea

The Mendelssohn is here Saly

Vaughan Williams / The Wasps
Alwyn / Derby Day
Arnold / A Sussex Overture
Elgar / Cockaigne
Dyson / At The Tabard Inn

and just to show I am not completely biased towards British music

Mendelssohn / Calm Sea And Prosperous Voyage

[roberta]

parsifal wagner
egmont beethoven
abduction from the harem mozart
2112overture rush
overture from tommy - the who
#6 tbc lol!

#6 now confirmed as suppe light cavalry

[ahinton]

Elgar - In the South?

I didn't mention this wonderful and profoundly appealing work in my choice because it's always struck me as a kind of mini-symphony rather than anything that one could reasonably describe as an "overture"...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I suppose Rienzi Overture gives best value for money - very long indeed!

[Pabmusic]

Has anyone chosen Wolf-Ferrari - Susanna's Secret? It used to be very popular...

Post 44, first on the list.

Don't think anyone's mentioned Bernstein's Candide yet. Shurely shome mishtake as it's clearly R3's most popular?

Post 44, second on the list.

I think I'll take a tip from Caliban and write my posts in bold and in colour!

[LeMartinPecheur]

I did indeed, in message #47!

+ Pabmusic's

Post 44, first on the list.

Sorry, off to Specsavers first thing tomorrow!

[jayne lee wilson]

I suppose Rienzi Overture gives best value for money - very long indeed!

Actually, Skalkottas' The Return of Ulysses easily outdoes Rienzi, at 28' or so, a sonata-structure including a double fugue as a development. Shame he never wrote the opera to go with it, but it's a violently compelling masterpiece; play it one day instead of 3 Webers or Beethovens.

Also like Panufnik's Tragic Overture and Szymanowski's straussian Concert Overture...

Anyone had Holst's Fugal Overture yet? One for EdgeleyRob, it's a goodie!

[AjAjAjH]

Here's another 6 from me in addition to my earlier list.

Elgar: In the South.
Glinka: Ruslan and Ludmilla (did it for O level)
Mozart: Marriage of Figaro.
Mendelssohn: Overture for wind instruments.
Schubert Overture in the Italien style. (either of them)
Berlioz: Les Franc Judges

[David-G]

It will have to be eight, I am afraid.

Unthinkable not to have a Mozart overture. And it has to be Figaro. It presages an evening of sheer delight.

Beethoven - I think it has to be Egmont, because of its sheer excitement and focus on the valiant stand for liberty.

Verdi - La Forza del Destino.

I have to have Berlioz - Benvenuto Cellini, I think.

Mendelssohn - I am sorely tempted by the Hebrides, but I think it will have to be A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Cherubini - Medee. Several people have voted for Anacreon - I don't know that. I shall have to listen to it.

I can't do without Rossini. Probably Semiramide.

And finally, Weber - Der Freischutz. Can't do without that.

[Pabmusic]

Here's my third six (all more seriously standard than the two sets I posted in 44):

Wagner: The Mastersingers
RVW: The Wasps
Verdi: The Force of Destiny
Brahms: Academic Festival
Borodin Prince Igor
Lalo: Le Roi d'Ys

[Zauberfloete]

My top six would be:

Mozart - Die Zauberfloete (of course!)
Beethoven - Egmont
Reznicek - Donna Diana
Wagner - Der fliegende Hollaender
Brahms - Academic Festival
Suppe - Light Cavalry

I wish I knew something else of "Donna Diana" other than the overture but I've never come across it.

[Pabmusic]

And six that are just fun:

John Ansell - Plymouth Hoe
Gordon Jacob - The Barber of Seville Goes to the Devil
Eric Fenby - Rossini on Ilkley Moor
Johann Strauss - Die Fledermaus
Sullivan - Yeomen of the Guard*
Offenbach - Orpheus in the Underworld

*One he actually wrote himself!