Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor

7/10/2025

It’s not so much a film this as an early music video depicting the mastery of their instruments by the members of MGM’s in-house orchestra. As it says on the can, these musicians are playing the overture from Otto Nicolai’s operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy. It uses fairly standard filming techniques and is actually something you could just as easily close your eyes and listen to as watch, but this is clearly a classy operation at work and it is good to hear the woodwind section get more prominence during the eight minutes. The one thing I did find curious was that there only appeared to be two women in this orchestra, both violinists, but otherwise it’s an unremarkable piece of film-making.