Overture to Leichte Kavallerie (Light Cavalry)

Leichte Kavallerie was a two-act farce staged at the Carltheater in Vienna on 21 March 1866, one of some thirty stage works Suppé wrote for that house. Its plot — a cavalry troop billeted in a village, a foundling, a travelling actress — has not been performed within living memory. The overture separated from the piece almost at once and became a fixture of band and orchestral programmes: a bugle call, a march for the horses, a Hungarian lament in the middle, and a closing galop that generations of cartoons have used for anything moving fast.