He worked at length with a young oboist on a solo from the overture to Johann Strauss's "Fledermaus".
Moments later, as Hitler, he calls himself the German Ethel Merman, and the orchestra answers with the opening notes from the overture of "Gypsy," in which Merman starred.
Verdi made his appearance through a reharmonized version of the ominous "Fate" motif from the overture to "La Forza del Destino".
Apart from the Overture, Scherzo and Finale - one of Schumann's most underrated orchestral works, here sounding fresh and totally buoyant - there are the overtures to his only opera Genoveva and from his incidental music to Schiller's The Bride of Messina.
The great, passionate, intense sweep of music that is the first act, from the overture to Idamante's recognition of his long-lost but forbidding father, is Romantic in conception and, like the plays of Shelley or Byron, impossible to represent fully on stage.
Indeed, from the overture, which begins promisingly with a jazzy swing rhythm, unusual for a theater piece (the score is played by a piano trio), the brothers Reale (pronounced ree-AH-lee) seem to understand what constitutes original work without being able to pull it off.
This six-voice mass has a serene, transparent mood, and it opens with a philosophical quotation from the Book of Job: "If we have received blessings from the hand of the Lord, why then should we not endure misfortune?"One of the most familiar tunes of all time, from the overture to Rossini's "William Tell", turns up in an unfamiliar form on "Rossini Gala" (Opera Rara ORR 211).
Yet from the overture's relentless fugue to that crushing ending, the performance's glory was Les Arts Florissants.
Transcription From the Overture Fra Diavolo Par Auber.
Apart from the overture, instrumental numbers were omitted, as were the recitatives.
