Donna Diana Overture

Emil von Reznicek was one of several Austrian composers drafted into the service of operetta from a military-musical background. In fact, it was while working as a military band master in Prague that he wrote his comic opera Donna Diana, which was first performed in that city in December 1894. Although he was to write as many as fifteen other stage works, and although he was to achieve some distinction as a composer and teacher in Berlin between the two World Wars, Donna Diana is the one piece by which he is now remembered and its overture the one score of his which is still regularly performed. The special quality of the Donna Diana Overture is that it is exactly the right length for its material, which is to say that it is very short. Its energy is generated by the busy little main theme which grows out of the introductory flourishes and which remains indefatigably active throughout - even on those timely occasions when the broader second theme enters to occupy the foreground for a while.