Overture to Oberon, J. 306

Program notes

About the Work

The overture to Oberon is among the last music Weber wrote, and he composed it under the shadow of his own death. Oberon, or The Elf King’s Oath was commissioned by the actor-manager Charles Kemble for Covent Garden in London, set to an English libretto by James Robinson Planché after Christoph Martin Wieland’s verse romance, itself drawing on the medieval tale of Huon of Bordeaux and threaded through with characters from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The plot turns on a quarrel between Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen Titania: the two will not be reconciled until they find a pair of human lovers faithful through every trial. The opera is a sprawling ‘English Romantic opera’ of spoken dialogue, songs and grand spectacle, a form that sat awkwardly with Weber’s symphonic gifts. It is the only opera he ever set in English.

Already gravely ill with tuberculosis, and against medical advice, Weber learned English to understand the libretto and dragged himself to London to oversee the production, conducting the premiere on 12 April 1826. The overture was one of the last numbers he completed, in London, while rehearsals were under way. The premiere was a triumph, but the effort finished him: Weber died in London on the night of 4–5 June 1826, less than two months later, at the age of thirty-nine. The opera that cost him his life is rarely staged today, as its hybrid form has never travelled well, but the overture has never left the repertoire, surviving as a perfect, self-contained distillation of the whole fairy-world it introduces.

Like many of his overtures, this one is built almost entirely from melodies that return later in the opera, so that it works as a kind of advance summary of the drama’s emotional terrain: the magic, the storm, the ardour, and the final blaze of triumph.

What to Listen For

The seed of the whole work is sown in the very first bar: a soft, unaccompanied horn-call, Oberon’s magic horn, three rising notes that conjure the fairy realm out of silence. Listen to how quietly the piece begins, the hushed strings and answering woodwinds (a little march for muted brass, a stirring in the violins) painting an enchanted twilight before the music has properly started. This slow introduction is all atmosphere and expectancy.

Then the Allegro bursts in, and the overture becomes a swift, brilliant sonata movement. Two ideas dominate: a darting, scurrying string theme full of fairy quicksilver, and a broad, soaring clarinet melody, followed by a theme from the heroine Reiza’s great aria ‘Ocean! thou mighty monster’, that swells into the overture’s emotional high point. Listen for the contrast between the gossamer fairy music and this full-throated Romantic ardour. Weber’s orchestration is the real marvel: the writing for horns and woodwinds, the way the orchestra glints and shimmers, points directly toward Mendelssohn’s fairy music (Mendelssohn even quoted Oberon in his Midsummer Night’s Dream overture) and Wagner’s instrumental colour. The coda gathers everything into a headlong, glittering rush to a triumphant close: nine minutes that open the evening with pure enchantment.