In your writing, you should be striving to wow, please and entertain readers. This is what readers want, and it works best which it is obvious from the first page.
There are different types of reader of course, and you will have decided who yours are, and maybe know a bit about their expectations, and what they are looking for.
Try including your theme on your first page. Ask yourself what the theme is and then pop it on the first page in a round about, or in gentle way, or in an obvious way, or in a subtle way. Just any way you like, just so that it is there.
The opening of Breakfast at Tiffany's is really quite conventional. The narrator takes us on a tour of his first ever new York apartment. The first page still it contains memory, romance and sets out at the end of its first paragraph that this is a story of becoming, and a story of becoming a writer.
That first page is your microcosm, it is a feature of the novella. Perhaps even like a well made cake, your themes will run through the entire core, marbling the story. So that every page, like every slice, contains as the first page does - - an aspect or other of the novella's themes.
Find more writing tips on our novella pages