Saturday music spot: Overture to Thomas Arne's opera "Alfred"

Thomas Arne's masterpiece "Alfred," which was first performed in 1740, contains one movement which is still very well known indeed while the rest of the opera is hardly ever performed and very little known today.

This overture is one of the pieces in the opera which deserves to be heard more often.

(The part of the opera which is most often still heard today is the finale, which is "Rule Britannia.")

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