Overture to Ruy Blas

Mendelssohn wrote this overture in 1839 for a benefit performance of Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas given for the Leipzig Theatre Pension Fund. He disliked the play intensely, called it beneath contempt in a letter to his mother, and refused to attach its name to the score: he referred to the piece only as the overture for the Theatre Pension Fund. The title Ruy Blas was added after his death when the work was published. He wrote it in three days, having initially declined the commission altogether.