Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven) which the bass theme is heard as the first variation before the main theme ultimately appears. This again parallels the structure of the Opus 35 variations themselves. Finally, the loud E chord that begins the Opus 35 variations themselves is moved here to the beginning of the first movement, in the form of the two chords that introduce the first movement. Alternatively, the first movement's resemblance to the overture to the comic opera "Bastien und Bastienne" (1768), composed by twelve-year-old W. A. Mozart, has been noted. It was unlikely that Beethoven knew of that unpublished composition. A possible explanation is
Comic opera style was widely imitated by their contemporaries (for example, in "Dorothy"), and the creators themselves wrote works in this style with other collaborators in the 1890s. None of these, however, had lasting popularity, leaving the Savoy Operas as practically the sole representatives of the genre surviving today. Only recently, some of these other English light operas have begun to be explored by scholars and to receive performances and recordings. The first opera presented in Russia, in 1731, was a comic opera (or "commedia per musica"), "Calandro", by an Italian composer, Giovanni Alberto Ristori. It was followed by the comic operas