Beethoven's Overtures represent something of a turning-point in the history of the genre: although written to introduce great stageworks, they were often divorced from that concrete context even during their composers lifetime and performed on their own in the concert hall. Nowadays they are generally heard without the following ballet music or incidental music and, indeed, the modern listener is often unaware that he or she has been deprived of the main part of the evening's entertainment in the form of the ballet or play. The eight overtures featured here were intended to introduce a variety of different works: a ballet (The Creatures of Prometheus), three stage plays (Coriolan, Egmont and The Ruins of Athens) and an opera (Fidelio), the four overtures to which are something of a special case in the history of music, inasmuch as they were written for one and the selfsame opera. They too, however, allow us to trace the development of the genre.

CORIOLAN
The Roman general Coriolanus is banished from Rome in spite of all that he has done for the city's welfare in the course of a series af military campaigns. Bent on revenge, he leads an army of Volscians against Rome. The Romans send his mother and wife to the enemy camp in an attempt to persuade him ta change his mind. Corialanus sees suicide as the only way out of his dilemma.
The overture to Coriolan has nothing to do with Shakespeare's Coriolanus but was written for Heinrich Joseph von Collin's tragedy of the same name, which was first performed in Vienna on 24 November 1802 with incidental music cobbled together from Mozart's Idomeneo by Maximilian Stadler. Beethoven himself is known to have attended this performance. Five years later he wrote a new overture for the play, although in the event the piece received its first performance not in the theatre but at a subscription concert that also included his first four symphonies, his Fourth Piano Concerto and some arias from Leonore (as Fidelio was still called at this time). The overture was conceived as a kind of dramatic poem, encouraging listeners to hear in the stark chords of the slow introduction a musical portrait of the hero. It freely adapts the principles of sonata form to the expression of human emotions, with a gloomily agitated first subject contrasted with a more amiably consoling second subject.

THE CREATURES OF PROMETHEUS
The two s[tatues] move slowly across the stage from the background. - P[rometheus] gradually regains consciousness, looks towards the field, and is pleased when he sees that his plan is such a success; he is inexpressibly delighted, stands up and beckons to the children to stop - They turn slowly towards him in an emotionless manner. - P continues to address them, expresses his divine and fatherly love for them, and commands them (gives them a sign) to approach him. - They look at him in an emotionless manner - turn to a tree, the great size of which they contemplate. - P begins once more to be disheartened, is fearful, and is saddened. He goes towards them, takes their hands and leads them to the front of the stage; he explains to them that they are his work, that they belong to him, that they must be thankful ta him, kisses and caresses them. - Howeven, still in an emotionless manner, they sometimes merely shake their heads, are completely indifferent, and stand there, groping in all directions. Beethoven's holograph copy of choreographical notes from the scenario for No. 1 contained in the Berlin "Landsberg 7" sketchbook.
Written in close collaboration with the choreographer Salvatore Viganò, the ballet music for The Creatures of Prometheus dates from 1800/01 and received its first performance at the Vienna Hofburgtheater on 23 March 1801. In his desire to forge close links between plot, dance and music, Beethoven created what for the time was a particularly modern form of musical dance theatre, thereby illustrating the sort of Gesamtkunstwerk or synthesis of the arts that was then being discussed by Schiller and Goethe.
These years also witnessed a revival of interest in Greek antiquity, with its humanistic and democratic ideals, ideals that were often associated with modern ideas, albeit not in any strictly historical way, still less from the hermeneutical standpoint adopted by Hegel. In consequence, we find both Goethe and Schiller reworking the Prometheus legend - the former in his poem of 1774 ("Here I sit, forming men / In my own image, / A race that shall be like me, / That shall suffer and weep, / Enjoy and rejoice, / And
pay you no heed, / Like me"), the latter in his early tragedy, Die Räuber, in which Karl Moor laments: "Prometheus, that lofty spark of light, has new burnt out, instead of which we're taken in by stage effects produced by vegetable brimstone."
The ideas behind Beethoven’s Prometheus are admirably summed up in a review of the first performance: "Prometheus banishes the state of ignorance, civilising men through science and art and inculcating a sense of morality. This, in a word, is the subject matter." The ballet's plot may be interpreted as an allegory of the importance of art and science in educating and civilising mankind and, hence, as a profound personal statement on the composer's part: it is art that makes us human. The subject matter continued to preoccupy Beethoven and he reused material from the ballet not only in his Piano Variations op. 35 but also in his Third Symphony ("Eroica").

THE RUINS OF ATHENS
Prompted by envy, Minerva refuses to defend Socrates against his judges and, as a result, is put to sleep by Zeus for two thousand years. The play begins as her period of punishment comes to an end and a chorus of Invisible Spirits rouses her from sleep. Mercury takes her back to Athens, where she is aghast to see her beloved city in ruins and ruled by the Turks. Rome too, she is told, has sunk into burbarisrn. Mercury informs her that the Muses have fled to Pest, whither both now set off in order to attend humanity’s celebrations in honour of the Muses and gods. Pest is hailed as a latterday Athens.
The overture The Ruins of Athens was Written in 1811/12 for a production of August von Kotzebue's stage play of the same name that opened the new Hungarian Theatre in Pest on 10 February 1812. Beethoven himself described the rarely performed overture as a "little work that can be performed [...] as a refreshment". The complete incidental music, with its pseudo-Turkish exoticism, comprises a chorus of Invisible Spirits, a duet for Minerva and Mercury, a chorus of Dervishes notable for its graphic tone-painting, a Marcia alla Turca, a speech for a Venerable Old Man in Pest and, finally, a Solemn March. Beethoven seems to have felt a certain attachment to this music, since he included the sixth, seventh and eighth numbers in the programme of his benefit concert in Vienna on 2 January 1814 (the programme also included his Wellingtons Sieg), insisting that the curtain should rise at a particular moment to reveal a portrait of the emperor - an example of his desire that his message be put across with the greatest possible clarity.

FIDELIO AND LEONOREN I - III
The Spanish nobleman Don Flarestan has been imprisoned by his enemy, Don Pizarro. Flarestan’s wife, Leonore, disguises herself as a man and, under the name of Fidelio, persuades the gaoler, Rocco, to employ her as his assistant. Believing Leonore to be a man, Rocco’s daughter, Marzelline, falls in love with her, and Rocco's himself encourages the match. Only her bridegroom, Jaquino, is dismayed. Fidelio gains Rocco’s trust and is allowed to see the prisoner. Pizarro arrives, resolved to murder Florestan, but Fidelio and the Minister’s arrival prevent him from carrying out the deed, and the prisoners are all set free.
Beethoven wrote no fewer than four overtures for Leonore or (to give it its more familiar name) Fidelio, thus ensuring that his only opera occupies a unique position among the world's great classics. This embarras de richesses is due, in part, to the opera's complex genesis but is also the result of purely musical considerations. The first version of the opera dates from 1805 and received its first performance at the Theater an der Wien at a time when Vienna was overrun by Napoleonic troops. Half the local population had fled before the advancing French armies, and those who remained scarcely dared venture out to the theatre, with the result that the opera played to a half-empty house consisting largely of French officers and proved a failure. This Ur-Leonore had to be satisfied with only three performances - performances, be it added, that also suffered from the censor's red pencil. A second production opened on 29 March 1806 but again had to be withdrawn, this time after only two performances, since Beethoven was unhappy with his fee. The definitive version of the opera - now called Fidelio - was finally unveiled on 23 May 1814 and this time encountered an enthusiastic response, in part, perhaps, because Viennese audiences now saw a link between the opera's plot and their own deliverance from Napoleon's tyranny.
There are four different overtures to go with these three different versions of the opera. The Leonore Overture no. 1 (as it is conveniently called) was rejected by Beethoven following a private run-through at the home of Prince Lichnowsky and was heard at none of the performances mentioned above. It did not appear in print until 1838, eleven years after Beethoven's death. The Leonore Overture no. 2 of 1805 is a substantially longer and more autonomous piece. As such, it is ill-suited to introducing the opera and is best seen as a forerunner of the concert overture. It remains unclear which of these two overtures was written first. The Leonore Overture no. 3 was written for the 1806 revival of the opera. A revision of no. 2, it is often heard today in the concert hall, The Fidelio Overture of 1814, finally, does not attempt to preempt the drama but leads neatly into it. Moreover, Beethoven’s decision to start the opera with the duet for Jaquino and Marzelline altered the existing tonal relationships and necessitated a new overture: since the duet begins in A major, the overture had to close on the dominant, E major, rather than on the C major of the three existing overtures. All four overtures were heard for the first time in 1840 at a Leipzig Gewandhaus concert conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.
In the autumn of 1809 Austria signed a peace treaty with Napoleon and shortly afterwards Beethoven, responding to a commission from the Vienna Burgtheater, began work on the incidental music for a new production of Goethe’s Egmont. The overture is often performed as an independent piece in the concert hall, although it really needs to be heard within the context of the incidental music as a whole, which comprises nine numbers in addition to the overture, namely, four instrumental interludes, two songs for Klärchen, a Larghetto depicting her death, a melodrama accompanying Egmont's thoughts on the eve of his execution and a final Symphony of Victory. Written some twenty years earlier, Goethe's five-act tragedy is set in the Netherlands at the time of the Spanish occupation, evoking evident parallels with Vienna and Napoleon’s occupying troops.

EGMONT
The hopes of all his people in their struggle for freedom rest on Count Egmont's shoulders, but he is arrested by the Spanish and condemned to death. Klärchen, a young burgher woman, loves him and tries in vain to incite the people to rescue him. In the face of failure, she poisons herself. The imprisoned Egmont has a vision of freedom before finally being led away to be executed. He dies proclaiming the words: "Protect your property! And to preserve your dearest ones, willingly, gladly fall as my example shows you. ”
The overture begins with a slow introduction in F minor in which gloomy chords on the strings are contrasted with a lyrical theme on the woodwinds. The Allegro is in Classical sonata form, a sudden silence in the entire orchestra following the recapitulation. "Egmont's death could be indicated by a rest," Beethoven noted in his sketches. The piece concludes with a Coda, the victorious fanfares of which look forward to the Symphony of Victory at the end of the play. It was not until July 1812, two years after he had completed the music for Egmont, that Beethoven was first introduced to Goethe. The meeting proved something of a disappointment for both men, their respect for each other's art stopping short of personal empathy. While Goethe was disturbed by Beethoven’s "unruly personality", Beethoven later wrote: "Goethe is too fond of court air, more than is fitting for a poet."