Franz von Suppè composed the music for more than 180 works of entertainment for the stage. They vary in length between one and five acts and most of them fill a whole evening. There is a great deal of variation in the way the genres are described, although the dividing lines between them are often fluid: operetta, farce, character sketch, vaudeville, magic tale, fairy tale and so on. Opera is the only genre of which there are hardly any examples to be found in Suppè’s oeuvre, although it is precisely Pique Dame that is described with journalistic licence in the review of the premiere in the Fremden-Blatt newspaper on 25 June 1864 as a ‘comic opera in two acts’. Today most of these works are unknown or it is only individual numbers that are have survived, as is often the case with the overture. The first performance of the operetta Pique Dame took place at the Thaliatheater in Graz on 22 June 1864. It was for this theatre that the work was composed. Suppè himself conducted the final rehearsal and also the premiere. The few reviews that there are of it in the Vienna dailies do not go into detail but are all positive. The audience rewarded both the composer and the protagonists with much applause. The many beautiful melodies were praised, and especially the overture, which had to be repeated. Individual numbers were brought out in printed editions by Franz Glöggl, a music publisher in Vienna, who also put on sale a potpourri and a quadrille based on melodies from the operetta, both arranged by Alexander Leitermayer, a popular conductor. The overture soon found its way into the concert programmes of both private orchestras in Vienna and military bands. It was also well-suited to performances with very large ensembles, for example as the opening piece of a ‘Monster Concert’ at Schwender’s Colosseum in Rudolfsheim on the outskirts of Vienna on Sunday 11 March 1866, where it was played by four military bands with a total of 160 musicians.
Concerts
Orchestra
Media
Shop
Licenses
Contact
Sitelinks
Partner
Newsletter