Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria von Weber, born near Lübeck in 1786, is the composer who, more than any other, founded German Romantic opera and gave it a national voice. A cousin of Mozart’s wife Constanze, he grew up in a travelling theatrical family, and the stage was in his blood from the start; he was a brilliant pianist, a sharp-witted music critic, and a conductor who reformed orchestral practice wherever he worked. As opera director first in Prague and then, from 1817, in Dresden, he built a German-language opera company in deliberate opposition to the reigning Italian fashion. His breakthrough came in 1821 with Der Freischütz, whose forest setting, folk colour, and supernatural ‘Wolf’s Glen’ scene electrified audiences and became the cornerstone of German Romantic opera, opening the path that led to Wagner, who revered Weber and in 1844 helped bring his remains home to Dresden. Weber’s health, never robust, was destroyed by tuberculosis. He travelled to London in 1826 to conduct the premiere of his last opera, Oberon, written to an English libretto, and died there a few weeks later, only thirty-nine years old, his orchestral imagination and gift for atmospheric scene-painting having permanently enlarged the expressive range of the Romantic orchestra.