Directly after Johann Strauss the Younger, Franz von Suppé is one of the most famous Austrian composers of the 19th century to have paid special tribute to 'light music'. His oeuvre includes nearly three dozen operettas and light operas as well as countless farces and comedies, which he loosened up by framing them with musical numbers. This was the typical repertoire of Old Viennese folk theatre, which he imaginatively enriched in his various capacities as Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Josefstadt and as chief composer and conductor at the Theater an der Wien, as well as on other stages of the Austrian capital later on. His most famous operettas are The Beautiful Galatea (1865), Fatinitza (1876) and Boccaccio (1879).

Although most of his stage works have now been forgotten, his sparkling, animated, captivating and thrilling overtures are supremely vivacious, conveying this composer’s skill, his imagination in inventing catchy melodies, and also his creative abilities where design or instrumentation are concerned. Overtures such as Light Cavalry, Poet and Peasant or Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna were indispensable parts of Viennese operetta’s 'golden age' and have remained a regular feature of the city’s musical life (e.g. the Vienna New Year's Concerts) to this day.

As Chief Conductor of the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Ivan Repušić has selected some of Suppé’s best-known and most popular overtures for his new studio production. Recorded in May 2018, this album is paving the way for the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth: Franz von Suppé was born on 18 April 1819 in Spalato, Dalmatia (today’s Croatian city of Split), and he died on 21 May 1895 in Vienna.