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/ˈoʊvərtʃər/ Listen

Overture

noun

Orchestral music played at the beginning of an opera or oratorio.

Something that serves as a preceding event or introduces what follows. Synonyms: preliminary, prelude. "Drinks were the overture to dinner"

A tentative suggestion designed to elicit the reactions of others. Synonyms: advance, approach, feeler.

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Etymology of 'Overture'

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"Overture" Quotes from Famous Books

... followed the example of that at Magdeburg and went into bankruptcy. During the honeymoon year, Wagner had composed only one work, an overture, based on "Rule Britannia." At that time "The Old Oaken Bucket" had not been written. He then drifted to Riga, where he became music-director and his wife a singer. Now his relentless ambition seized him and he determined ...

— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... your ear. I bring no overture of war, no taxation of homage; I hold the olive in my hand: my words are as ...

— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... had Don Saltero, with a degage air of graceful melancholy, actually launched into what he was pleased to term a tune, than a universal irritation of nerves seized the whole company. At the first overture, the three citizens swore and cursed, at the second division of the tune, they seized their hats, at the third they vanished. As for me, I found all my limbs twitching as if they were dancing to St. Vitus's ...

— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... reason that she could not ride away from the party, after Mrs. Maxwell assailed her with a motive for her conduct, Joanna could not repel his overture. It was incredibly trying to her. He saw how differently she was affected from her sisters. He was aware of another influence. He felt very uncomfortable. Why, the very flesh of his arm, which she touched lightly enough, crept, when the superstition ...

— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... old tales, such as the "Haimonskinder," the "Schoene Magelone," "Tannhaeuser," and the "Schildbuerger." His "Phantasus" (1812) contained original tales conceived in the same spirit. Scherer says that Tieck uttered the manifesto of German romanticism in the following lines from the overture of his ...

— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

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