Can you overpower a speaker

How about this option: Get a pair of killer subs. If you use them with a high quality crossover it will alleviate a ton a strain on your amp (since bass is power hungry) and help to protect the speakers from being pushed too hard. A huge pair of REL's will give you all the bass you could ever want, protect your speakers and add hundreds of watts per channel...

There are ratings for reasons;answering you question on wanting massive power in my opinion is fine if applied properly and understanding the consequences if used improperly.

To Elevick's suggestion, it's great if you are using speakers with high-order crossovers and it will certainly give you the impression of more horsepower and protect your primary speakers, but if you are running speakers with simple first-order crossovers, then using an outboard crossover is going to kill all of the benefits that first-order crossovers bring.

Also, getting back to power generally, you ideally want an amp with a lower continuous power rating (darTZeel, Ayre, the new Rowland 625) as I explained above, but also an amp with a very stiff power supply that can deliver huge amounts of instantaneous power. Such amps, such as the big Naim amp and the CAT JL1 monos, seemingly have the power of a 500 watt Krell, but without the drawbacks.

A person is in far more danger in using a low to medium powered amp that clips a lot and at high volume can definitely damage tweeters and sometimes other drivers. I have rarely seen high powered amps kill drivers, unless the power handling capacity of the speakers are not up to the job. Basically, don't buy an amp with more than the power capacity of the speaker, or at least keep the volume knob under control. Or, if you have very high powered amplification, buy speakers with high current and power capacity.

Greg

A speakers ability to absorb power decreases as it gets hot....and the Electrical characteristics change. Mostly for the worse.
In short (no pun intended) too much power is for sure possible. Even perhaps, when no audible distortion is present, you can get a VC pretty darn hot and damage it.