It doesnt count as an overture, but I love the ticking of the clock in 30/90 from Tick, tick...BOOM!
And the other thing about the Phantom Lady was, Bert, she realized, in the city that never sleeps...
What did she realize, Kitten?
That all the songs she'd listened to, all the love songs, that they were only songs.
What's wrong with that?
Nothing, if you don't believe in them. But she did, you see. She believed in enchanted evenings, and she believed that a small cloud passed overhead and cried down on a flower bed, and she even believed there was breakfast to be had...
Where?
On Pluto. The mysterious, icy wastes of Pluto.
For me from the shows that I have seen I really haven't gotton a bad overature. If I get chlls during it then to me it is a good overature.
Thoroughly Modern Millie Chicago Mamma Mia Peter Pan
Other shows that I have seen that didn't necesarily have overtures but gave me chills was when they kick off the music in Rent then some small chills at the beginning of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Yaay, another orchestra thread! Hehe. I've actually never heard the Gypsy overture, sounds like I'm missing out. POTO and Les Miz and Wicked all have nice little openings, but I don't think it really counts as an overture. My two personal favorites are West Side Story(everything about the music to WSS is amazing) and My Fair Lady. That one really establishes the show for me.
"If there was a Mount Rushmore for Broadway scores, "West Side Story" would be front and center. It snaps, it crackles it pops! It surges with a roar, its energy and sheer life undiminished by the years" - NYPost reviewer Elisabeth Vincentelli
haha you guys rock. the four that i were thinking were of course gypsy, poto, carousel (it actually gives me chills and i actually sing with it) and merrily.
"Noah, someday we'll talk again. But there's things we'll never say. That sorrow deep inside you. It inside me, too. And it never go away. You be okay. You'll learn how to lose things..."
-Gypsy -Funny Girl (Jule Styne is a master) -Merrily We Roll Along -Carousel -Candide (I'm categorizing it as a musical)
BEST OPENINGS
-Sunday In The Park... (Those chords!) -Sweeney Todd (That whistle!)
and more recently -Ragtime - the original set design with the stereopticon slides merging and revealing the families all in white. -Phantom (You gotta admit - The opening is quite impressive)
Producers Wicked- yeah not much of an oveture but beginning of it is beautiful! Phantom Guys and Dolls Damn Yankees Wonderful Town Annie Fiddler on The Roof
I have a personal thing with Big River. It's my fave overture, basically because back when I did the show, our orchestra played a replica of the version on the BCR, but what got me was that the Harmonica sounded like a real Harmonica, yet, it was coming from a keyboard. Still, it was great hearing the Orchestra play that live.
"Do you know what pledge time is, Andrew"? said the PBS Executive.
"Yes", Lloyd Webber replied. "My 50th birthday special must be one program that gets done a lot."
"No", mused the man from PBS heedlessy. "Not so much. Our Stephen Sondheim Carnegie Hall concert. That's a big one."
Spoons, forks and knives seemed suddenly to suspend their motion in horror, all around the table.
sometimes i think overtures are my favortie part of shows...heres a list: (in no order) candide, gypsy, nine, amour, producers, bounce, man of la mancha (you know that: Ayee... aye-yee. Este Fuego!!)
etc.etc.etc. there are so many
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed