Weber's Invitation to the Dance tells the story of a couple at a ball, from the moment the young man politely asks the girl to dance to their equally polite parting after taking several turns around the room. Originally written for piano, this work has appeared in various arrangements for different ensembles, from violin and piano to full orchestra. The best-known orchestration is by Hector Berlioz. Berlioz, a great admirer of Weber, made his arrangement in 1841, to serve as the ballet for a production of Weber's opera Der Freischütz at the Opéra de Paris. At the time, the Opéra required a ballet in the second act of any opera it produced. (It allowed no spoken parts, requiring Berlioz to write recitatives for the opera.) And by this time, the orchestral waltzes by Josef Lanner and Johann Strauss Sr. were popular. Berlioz' orchestration loses none of the original version's charm. The slow opening, the young man's request for a dance, is an elegant, refined phrase performed by a solo cello, with the girl's response coming in the woodwinds. The instrumentation, including two harps, and the sparkling waltz sound is very similar to the "Un Bal" movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Berlioz programmed Invitation in his concerts almost as frequently as his own Roman Carnival Overture. In 1911, choreographer Michel Fokine took up the orchestral version for his ballet Le Spectre de la rose. The story of the ballet, based on a poem by Théophile Gautier (and, coincidentally, used by Berlioz for a song setting), resembles Weber's original program: a girl dreams that the ghost of the flower dances with her.

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