Oberon is Weber's final opera and one of his most impressive works. He composed the work between 1825 and 1826 on commission for Covent Garden, and it premiered there in April 1826.

Weber found a rich and evocative story for the stage. Oberon has settings in medieval France, at the legendary Arabian court of Haroun al-Raschid and in the fairy world. Oberon refuses to return to Titania until he has proof that at least one pair of lovers can remain faithful. The fairy Puck procures a magic horn, which he gives to one of Charlemagne's knights, Huon, so that Huon can rescue his lady Reiza from the Arabian court and thus become living testimony to faithfulness. The combination of elements alone allowed Weber much opportunity to compose music suggestive of locale and emotion. While the libretto is often regarded as extremely weak, the music surpasses those constraints.

Weber learned English to work more closely with his librettist, James Robinson Planché. Performances in German, as usually occur, reflect a translation from the original form of the opera. The first translation was by Weber's sometime collaborator Theodore Hell. Other German versions were made to bring it effectively to the stage and to make the music more continuous than in the original, which was written to suit English tastes for spectacle and for dialogue rather than recitative. Gustav Mahler not only adjusted several numbers, but also rewrote some of the opera to arrive at a consistent performing score.

With Der Freischütz and Euryanthe, Weber had composed two successful operas that set the standard for the German stage. Oberon shows not only Weber's mature style, but also reflects an intensified—almost bel canto—lyricism. He avoided the menacing naturalism of Der Freischütz or the more formal elegance of Euryanthe. Instead, he arrived at a light and deft approach to the work, which anticipates the "elfin" sounds Mendelssohn created in his music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In doing so, Weber used exposed wind passages and made the string textures more transparent. The unifying theme of the magic horn brought a different color to the work and contributed a musical cue to the dramaturgy. Even though Oberon involves spoken dialogue, the musical numbers are nonetheless operatic and many of them are sustained scenes. The famous soprano aria for Reiza, "Ocean! Thou mighty monster," is comparable to the kind of music Bellini would take up in Norma and other works in the 1830s. At the same time, the orchestra plays an important role in the work and functions as more than mere accompaniment. The aria cited above is effective because of the interaction that occurs between the solo voice and the orchestra. Without burying the voice under a symphonic texture, Weber creates a blend between the media. This kind of intense musical interplay is typical of Weber's work late in his career, and his influence on succeeding generations is notable for it.

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Act 1 - 1.Overture

Weber's opera Oberon (1826), despite its gorgeous music, disappeared, unfortunately, not long after its premiere in the limbo of unperformed operas. Some critics have blamed the unwieldy libretto, a confusing tangle of characters, narratives, and events; others have objected to the excessive use of non-singing parts. For a music lover, indeed, Weber's opera is like a mountain concealing untold treasures. However, the gem-like Overture requires no geological efforts, for in this work the dazzling, mellifluous charm of Weber's music shines in all its fantastic splendor. Like in Mozart's Magic Flute, a supernatural instrument (in Weber's work it is Oberon's horn) is heard when mortal lovers face danger. The Overture opens with Oberon's call: the French horn plays, Adagio sostenuto and dolce, a magically simple motif, "do-re-mi" (in D major), with the first note dotted. After Oberon's call is answered by the strings, a gossamer veil, woven by the almost transparent sounds of the woodwinds, is lifted, and a fanfare establishes the triumphant presence of the fairy world. Adumbrating the narrative in the opera, Weber, establishes Oberon's call as a leitmotif and creates a hypnotic atmosphere in which feelings of monumental passion, depicted by feverishly obsessive scintillations wrought by the strings, easily deliquesce into melodic expressions of deeply-felt longing. Unlike Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream, which depicts three worlds (the supernatural, the human, and the chthonic), Weber's Oberon Overture is a celebration of the supernatural realm: while sounds from the human world may approach the confines of Oberon's realm, the fundamental Oberon motif defines the boundaries of the fantastic world into which Weber transports his listeners. Nocturnal, for all magical words exist behind the veil of darkness, Oberon's domain, as depicted in the Overture, nevertheless departs from the traditional Romantic conception of the night as a chaotic universe which abolishes the familiar dichotomies, such as life and death, or good and evil, dichotomies that introduce order into human existence. In Weber's overture, night's mantle shields a mysterious world from the corrosive effect of everyday banality, but the denizens of Oberon's land remain protected from the many maleficent spirits, such as death, despair, and disease, that also haunt the vast expanses of the night. In Weber's world it is Oberon's horn, and not dawn, which banishes the terrors of the night.



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