Unlike his contemporary Rossini, who used the same overture in several operas, Beethoven sometimes wrote several overtures to the same piece. He did so not only in the well-known case of Fidelio but with The Ruins of Athens as well. It was in 1811 that Beethoven first composed music to this play by August von Kotzebue; the occasion was the opening of the German theatre in Pest. When, a decade later, the piece was revived in Vienna, Beethoven was, once again, dissatisfied with his own work and wrote a new overture, which would remain his last.

The house that was being consecrated with this music was the new Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna. Kotzebue's work was custom-made for such an occasion, as it treated of Thespis, the legendary creator of ancient Greek drama, who had to flee his country which had been subjugated by the Turks, and found a new home in Pest (or Vienna, in the revised version).

Beethoven's overture establishes a celebratory tone in part by fanfares and march tunes, and in part by Baroque counterpoint. The former predominates in the slow introduction, the latter in the Allegro. The opening Maestoso features three trombones to enhance the glory of the festivities; they later fall silent and are not heard in the Allegro at all. This is rather unusual since the performing forces normally increase, rather than decrease, in the course of a composition. Beethoven counterbalanced this loss by a grandiose, extremely dense fugato section. The concluding, triumphant C-major sonorities evoke the the great closing moments of the Fifth Symphony and the Leonore overtures.