Suppe's sparkling seven-minute overture was composed for a stage play with added music first performed in Vienna's Theater in der Josefstadt on February 26, 1844 under the composer's baton. Suppe was fairly new at the podium and actually volunteered for the position with no pay in order have the opportunity to perform his own new works. Although not as famous as the later "Poet and Peasant," it shares many of the features of the later masterwork. The study score here is a newly-engraved and researched performing edition prepared by Clark McAlister.

Suppe's operetta "Dichter und Bauer" (Poet and Peasant) was the first to earn him a reputation as a composer in Vienna. His reputation as a conductor was established two years before at the Theater in der Josefstadt, where he composed incidental music to the play "Ein Morgen, ein Mittag, und ein Abend in Wien," whose overture remains in the orchestral repertoire to this day. By the premiere of "Dichter und Bauer," at the Theater an der Wien on August 24, 1846, Suppe was no longer conducting for free. The operetta was successful and the overture entered the orchestral repertoire soon after....

By the 1860s, the operettas of French composer Jacques Offenbach were becoming ppopular with the Viennese audience. Franz von SuppE, already established in the Austrian Imperial capital as an operetta composer and conductor, found the new competition stimulating enough to produce a new two-act operetta based upon the classic tale of the sculptor Pygmalion falling in love with his statue of GalathEe. The first performance was given in Berlin on June 30, 1863 with the Vienna premiere at the Carltheater on September 9, 1865. "Die schone Galathée" proved to be one of the composer's most...

Easily the most popular of the collection of overtures produced by Suppe for this operettas, the one for the 1866 "Die Leichte Kavallerie" entered the concert repetoire soon after its premiere. The study score offered here is a thoroughly-researched and beutifully engraved new edition prepared by conductor Clark McAlister. First offered as large conductor score and parts in 2007, the licensed reissue is now available as an easily affordable study score in a convenient format for study and enjoyment.