In 1904, after having tackled heavier fare in the biblical Saul og David, Nielsen began work on only his other opera Maskarade. He composed the work quickly after a period of rest enforced by a heart condition, and one cannot help but suspect that it represented a sort of reaction on the composer's part to the grand opera proportions of the former work—Nielsen had long inveighed against Romantic excess. A lifelong devotee of Mozart, he created an eighteenth-century setting and light-yet-lively mood of the music that would seem to be an act of homage. Add in a libretto by Vilhelm Andersen after Holberg's beloved 1724 satire Mascarade; featuring a likable worldly-wise servant named Henrik, and Nielsen's opera appears as a spiritual descendent of Figaro. Briefly, the plot centers around two young maskers in disguise who fall in love, unaware that they already know each other.

The overture has always been fairly well known, even before Nielsen's star began to rise internationally in the middle twentieth century. In its vivacity, tunefulness, and unproblematic tonality (from a composer who reveled in tonal problems!) it flirts with "pops" status. As with many opera overtures, the concert version differs somewhat from the stage version in its vigorous forte ending, whereas the latter functionally "slips" into the drama. Aside from a bustling sixteenth-note motive which will figure in the opera proper, the overture is based around two self-sufficient themes which do not reappear in the dramatic work. The first theme offers one of Nielsen's typical themes in "athletic triple time" (to quote Robert Simpson); hearty and festive, it encapsulates the revelry of the opera. The second theme is a transformed diminution of the main theme and is mincing and slightly ceremonial in nature, evocative of an age when social protocol and pecking order were the norm. The themes are worked over, and a frenetic coda which intermingles the two themes brings the concert version of this work to happy close.

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