When and why did overtures go out of style?

Culture today. Nobody has time for anything. Short attention spans.
All people do is talk through overtures and check their phones.

We don't really have strong enough scores to support listening to them in an overture.

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What current shows on bway have overtures?

Both of Mel Brooks' musicals had great, lengthy overtures. Most of the recent musicals that even have overtures have had brief, short ones; one or maybe two minutes. (URINETOWN, SPAMALOT, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, NEWSIES, GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE are among these ranks) Both YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and especially THE PRODUCERS had tremendous, full-blooded overtures.

THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA had a gloriously understated overture, a beautiful entree into the world of Guettel's Italian soundscape.

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To answer the original question, I think one important factor (which doesn't devolve into criticizing attention spans of the audience and actually discusses the merit of the material and style of musical theatre as it evolves) is the sea change from orchestral music to more pop/rock-based styles. TOMMY has an overture, and it is epic and one of my favorites, but it's particularly hard to think of examples of overtures from rock-based scores. Something about the sweep and texture of orchestral music lends itself more favorably to an overture treatment, and as more and more musicals eschew full orchestras for different musical configurations, the overture naturally is no longer as common.

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It's cause most shows have a pop/rock vibe to them these days. We don't get many new musicals like GUYS AND DOLLS, MUSIC MAN and HELLO DOLLY anymore Now it's all about "Oooooh how many times can I say the f word in a song". We are in the age of shock value musical theatre. But I'm just being a pessimist. I LOVED Book of Mormon

They're not traditional overtures, but thankfully we have David Yazbek's killer openings to Full Monty, Scoundrels, and Verge.

Yes! I absolutely love the overture-esque instrumentals at the beginning of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. They establish the tone of the entire show so well.

I also love the way Bullets Over Broadway staged their overture. It's a great short listen in its own right, but it certainly held the audience's attention when Nick Cordero came out with a semi-automatic and shot the show curtain!

I think many of today's new scores could absolutely support an overture.

The main reason they aren't around (in the grand tradition I mean) is that audiences simply won't sit through them anymore.

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I know it's a revival, but CABARET has one of my favorite entr'actes of all time and is currently playing on Broadway.

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Lengthy overtures are examples of programatic music, designed to be absorbed intelligently and in silence as one would a classical work. In the days when symphonies and the Pops were primary forms of entertainment and still in the mainstream, these made sense- more than simply introducing the world and tunes of the show (many older overtures are not orchestral medleys, but independent works without repeated motifs), they were a part of the evening, not a part of the show.

As programmatic music left modern culture, the overture became part of the show, not a prelude to it. You began seeing short overtures or staged overtures as musical scenes.

Thank you, darque and Whizzer, for two more excellent points.

The idea of it being generational and the audiences' fault, and not the way the mechanics of the style and substance in the evolution of the form and the cultural landscape at large, is such a useless trope to me. Audiences simply won't sit through them anymore? When have you ever seen an audience walk out in disgust or dismay at the sound of an overture?

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Many shows have entr'acte but no overture, as before a show begins there are announcements, lowering of lights and other formalities. Music before Act 2 makes the transition back less abrupt.