An overture (from the French for “opening”) is a musical preview. In classical operas, the overture contains the core themes in embryo, giving the listener a foretaste of what is to come.
Peaks of the genre: the overture to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (energetic burlesque), to Don Giovanni (dramatically mystical), to Wagner's The Flying Dutchman (a storm-tossed seascape). There is also the concert overture — a standalone work on a literary or historical theme: Mendelssohn's The Hebrides, Beethoven's Coriolan, and Wagner's A Faust Overture.
Two types of operatic overture took shape historically: the French (a slow, solemn introduction with dotted rhythm, followed by a fast fugal section) and the Italian (fast–slow–fast), which later grew into the independent symphony. In the 19th century the overture often turned into an expansive symphonic poem, and some concert overtures became repertoire staples even without the opera they were meant to open.
