Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna: Overture

The composer who did most to create Viennese operetta, before Johann Strauss II capitalised on it, was Franz von Suppé. He had not only the initiative but also the talent to create pieces just as entertaining as the Offenbach opéras bouffes that threatened to swamp the Viennese theatre in the late 1850s and 1860s. If most of the dozens of operettas he composed for the Theater an der Wien and the Carltheater are now remembered only by their overtures, it is not so much because the operettas are inferior as because the overtures are so very good. Though written in 1844, years before he entered into competition with Offenbach, the overture to a comedy sketch on life in Vienna called Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien - with its slow introduction, its elegantly lyrical cello solo, and its tuneful and increasingly brilliant closing section - is a thoroughly characteristic example.

When Suppé wrote the Overture for Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna - a play with songs first performed in 1844 - Viennese operetta as we know it did not exist. It would not exist, in fact, until 1860 when, challenged by the overwhelming popularity of the Offenbach operettas recently imported from Paris, he wrote Das Pensionat, which is certainly not the best known but was probably the first of its kind. He went on to write dozens more, including Die schöne Galathea in 1865, Fatinitza in 1876 and -”the greatest succes of my life” - Bocaccio in 1879. If most of them, like Pique-Dame and Light Cavalry, are now remembered only by their overtures, it is not so much because the operettas are fo very inferior as because the overtures are so very good. In fact, Suppé was a master of the overture from an early stage in his career. Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna is a characteristic product, beginning ceremoniously, featuring an extended and highly melodious cello solo, recalling the opening gestures and then racing off in a hurry. Unlike its close relation, the Poet and Peasant Overture, it doesn’t have the time to break into a waltz but it does run into a vigorous ballroom galop at one point.