Weber intended to compose Die Drei Pintos as a grand comic opera that would be the counterpart of the more serious work, Der Freischütz, but left it unfinished. The opera involved the libretto by Theodor Hell (pseudonym of Carl Gottfried Theodor Winkler), who, in turn, based his work on the novella, Der Brautkampf (The struggle for the bride) by Carl Seidel (1819). The novella was a four-part work, which Hell turned into a three-act drama, making the prose narrative into a more operatic presentation. Subsequently Weber outlined the numbers he envisioned for the opera and began to sketch the work. The surviving materials extend to approximately seven numbers of the twenty-one projected, with the bulk of the work being rather preliminary melodies and, on occasion, melodies with bass lines added.

The numbers sketched extend to the opening scene and the remaining numbers for the first act. Weber did not leave sketches for the overture, but a fragmentary full score exists for the opening number of the second act. As to the remainder of the second act and the entirety of the third, Weber outlined the entire opera, and indicated specific numbers, voicings (aria, duet, etc.), meter signatures, and keys for each. The outline, which Hell copied from Weber's manuscript, is preserved and probably circulated with the sketches when Caroline von Weber sought a composer to complete her husband's opera after his death.

The music as found in the sketches is from a relatively early stage of composition, and Weber had not yet proceeded to sufficient detail to allow for a discussion of style. Nevertheless, the material emerged from Weber's maturity, specifically between the groundbreaking German opera Der Freischütz and the equally strong Euryanthe, and should have been of the same quality. In approaching a comic subject, though, Weber faced the tradition of the German Singspiel, and the lighter character of the latter style may not have accommodated easily the more earnest music suggested in the sketches.

What exists is a torso that can never be performed as Weber intended. While the sketches extend to 1700 measures and encompass the first act, it would require drastic intervention to bring them to performance. After Weber's death, various attempts were made at doing so, but they required a collaborative effort tantamount to composing the opera. One such effort on the part of Karl Reissiger, Weber's successor at Dresden, involved an arrangement of Weber's original no. 3 "So wie Blumen" as a duet with orchestra. Afterward, Weber's widow Caroline approached Giacomo Meyerbeer about completing the opera. Since both were students of Abbé Vogler at about the same time, Meyerbeer would have been an appropriate composer to take on the project. Unfortunately, he found difficulties with the task and held onto the sketches for approximately 20 years. Documentary evidence suggests that he had had problems with Hell's libretto for Die drei Pintos. The sketches subsequent transferred back to the Weber family and only in 1886 did the composer's grandson Carl von Weber find a composer who succeeded at the task of completing Die drei Pintos in the young conductor Gustav Mahler. The version of the opera that Mahler brought to the stage in 1888 is to date the only one. It is in Mahler's hands an effective work and a unique posthumous collaboration, since it involved two strong composers, albeit separated by over half a century.





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