Some musicals start with an overture, a preview of the songs to come – which is great if you’ve seen the show before, but can be a little strange for newcomers. I prefer shows that jump right in, that use the first few minutes of the show to present not only the show’s music but its thesis statement. The following twelve opening numbers draw the audience in and truly tell what it is they are about to see.

1. “The Avenue Q Theme” – Avenue Q

Avenue Q is what Sesame Street would be if it were written for adults, and the brief jingle-like opening song presents both the television-style format the show will use and the cynical humor that permeates the entire show: "The sun is shining, it's a lovely day / A perfect morning for a kid to play / But you've got lots of bills to pay / What can you do?"

2. “I Hope I Get It” – A Chorus Line

A Chorus Line skips any preamble and jumps right into scene: the audition room of a chorus line. The audience immediately gets a taste of how fast-paced the audition process is, and how much stress the cast is under - "I really need this job!" Right away we have the characters, the setting, and the stakes. And a lot of awesome dancers. You can't go wrong there.

3. “Ring Around the Moon” – The Spitfire Grill

As a film-to-stage adaptation with only seven people in its cast, The Spitfire Grill has two goals with its opening number: provide the necessary backstory, and convince the audience that you don't need huge dance numbers to make a great musical. "Ring Around the Moon" does just that, starting the show with a lone singer and a beautiful song that draws the audience along through the opening scenes of Percy's journey "on the road to Gilead / Down a highway I don't know."

4. “And All That Jazz” – Chicago

This opening number has hardly any plot to it at all. "And All That Jazz" sets the mood of Chicago, focusing on the music and the general attitude of its stars: "No, I'm no one's wife
/ But, oh, I love my life / And all that jazz!" You get to know what parts of a show are the priorities from the opening number.

5. “Tradition” – Fiddler on the Roof

I saw an interview with one of the people who wrote Fiddler on the Roof once, in which the guy said they kept coming back to the question, "What is this story about? Not the plot, what's it about?" And the answer they finally landed on was, "It's about tradition." "Tradition" thoroughly establishes the village of Anatevka, the people who live there, and how they "have traditions for everything," setting the stage for these traditions to be tested over the course of the show.

6. “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats” – Cats

Cats is a show that's low on plot and big on quirky characters, clever rhymes, and enormous full-cast dance numbers, and "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" presents all of these things - "because Jellicles can, and Jellicles do!"

7. “It All Comes Back” – Fun Home

Fun Home is a musical that crosses time, as Alison looks back on her life and relationship with her father. "It All Comes Back" introduces the audience to this format right away, showing both child-Alison's interaction with her father and adult-Alison's commentary on the scene. This song also tells the show Alison's goal from this past reflection, the theme that stitches the show together: to discover "what's true / dig deep into who / and what and why and when / until now gives way to then."

8. “Into the Woods” – Into the Woods

Into the Woods is a story with a lot of stories in it, with a lot of characters and a lot of individual goals, and somehow this opening number manages to set them all up and give the audience hints about how they will all eventually collide. Granted, it's a long opening number, and one that shows off the actors' chops as they go "into the woods / and out of the woods / and home before dark!"

9. “You Are What You Feel/Jacob and Sons” – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

This two-part opening number provides both thesis statement - this is a story about dreamers - and backstory - this is the story of the sons of Jacob, "way way back many centuries ago / not long after the Bible began." It's efficient, and it's catchy to boot!

10. “Look Down” – Les Misérables

Les Misérables is another musical that jumps right into the story, establishing both the titular mood of misery ("Look down, look down, / you'll always be a slave") and the primary conflict of the story, between Valjean and Javert, the criminal and the policeman. It also sneaks in a little backstory, as Valjean and Javert argue about why he was imprisoned for so long. It's hard to split up songs in an opera, but for me this part counts as the opening number - this is the low point from which Valjean starts, and the rest of the show will follow him climbing up from it.

11. “Big Bright Beautiful World” – Shrek the Musical

Shrek is a fairy tale, and like Into the Woods, this opening number appropriately starts with the line "once upon a time." It goes on to deliver a little backstory and give the audience an early taste of the show's gloomy humor "It's a big bright beautiful world / with happiness all around / It's peaches and cream, and every dream comes true / But not for you!" At the same time, the song establishes the more in-depth and in-detail look at prejudice that the musical takes compared to its movie predecessor, showing the way Shrek internalizes his parents' warnings and the surrounding world's hatred of him.

12. “Alexander Hamilton” – Hamilton

The opening number of Hamilton does three things. It provides backstory, summarizing the first decade and a half of Alexander Hamilton's life. It introduces its audience to the rap-musical format, giving rap fans and musical theatre fans a melodic group number and slow-paced rap verses respectively to get used to. And it presents the central question of the piece: "How does a [long list of things Hamilton had going against him] grow up to be a hero and a scholar?"