For the Swedish conductor Joseph Martin Kraus, the overture played an important role in his own stage compositions. From a young age he had been fascinated by the theater and especially by opera. The great idol of the young German, who made a career in Stockholm, was Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose main concern was that dramatic works should be both logical and emotional. The opera Aeneas i Cartago, written in 1790, occupies the most important place in the composer's oeuvre; for this opera alone he wrote three extended and dramatic orchestral introductions, which are among Kraus's latest pieces. For Kraus, the overture was an integral part of the rest of the work – whether that work was dramatic or comic in nature. His overtures provide the key to the dramaturgical content of the main pieces, whether they were intended for the stage or the concert hall. With the Ensemble Theresia, cpo plans to record Kraus's complete symphonic works in the coming years.