Carl Maria von Weber

A precursor of German Romanticism, Carl Maria von Weber's legacy includes three great operas, Der Freischütz, Euryanthe and Oberon. Born in Eutin, near Lübeck, on November 18, 1786, Carl Maria von Weber was the son of officer and amateur musician Franz Anton von Weber, the town's choirmaster. An uncle of Mozart's wife, Constanze Weber, his only wish was to make him a child prodigy, leaving his musical education to the elder Fridolin, a former pupil of Josef Haydn and himself a composer, so that he could devote himself more fully to the family's touring theater troupe. Fridolin's health was fragile, and he inherited a hip disease that left him with a lifelong limp. This childhood spent in theaters from one town to the next was not to be in vain in the musician's taste for the world of opera. In the meantime, he learned to play the piano with one of his father's friends, J. P.. Heuschkel in Hildburghausen, then counterpoint in Salzburg with Michael Haydn, before sojourns in Vienna and Munich, where his first compositions, 6 Fughetten (1698), were written. He studied singing with Valesi (J. B. Wallishauser) and composition with J. N. Kalcher, and composed an opera, Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins, the manuscript of which is lost. He took an interest in lithography with its inventor, Aloys Senefelder, and engraved his 6 Variations on an Original Theme for Piano (1800) himself. For a time, his father planned to set up a lithography workshop in Freiberg, but the venture eventually failed. Returning to music, the fourteen-year-old Weber presented his comic opera Das Wäldmadchen in Freiberg on November 24, 1800, which was revived in Chemnitz and Vienna. He reunited with Josef Haydn's brother in Salzburg, who helped him complete the opera Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn, first performed in Augsburg in 1803. Back in Vienna, he took lessons from Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler, a great theorist who, in June 1804, won him the post of Kapellmeister at the Breslau Opera, a position he held until 1806. He led a boisterous and wasteful life, in conflict with musicians who did not accept being conducted by an eighteen-year-old. In addition, he almost died when he swallowed nitric acid, which he had mistaken for wine and used for his lithographs. His vocal cords were damaged for the rest of his life. Engaged by Duke Eugen of Württemberg in Carlsruhe, he composed two symphonies, but lost his position as intendant due to financial constraints. He returned to Prince Ludwig in Stuttgart as secretary and music teacher. With the help of librettist Franz Karl Hiemer, he completed the opera Silvana, premiered in Frankfurt in 1810, and Abu Hassan, presented in Munich in 1811 and still in the repertoire. However, in February 1810, a dark case of embezzlement in which his father was implicated led to his dismissal from prison for sixteen days and their banishment by King Frederick I, the prince's brother. This episode marked a turning point in Weber's life, and he decided to review his conduct and restore his reputation (usurped by his father). He moved to Darmstadt, where he found Abbé Vogler, and embarked on a career as an itinerant musician and conductor, composing his first Piano Concerto (1810), followed by a Clarinet Concertino, two Clarinet Concertos and a Bassoon Concerto in 1811. His clarinet works, intended for the virtuoso Heinrich Bärmann, were performed together in Switzerland, Prague, Leipzig, Weimar, Dresden and Berlin, before King Frederick William III. On December 17, 1812, he premiered his Piano Concerto No. 2 as a soloist in Gotha. In January 1813, Weber was appointed director of the German Opera in Prague, taking initiatives to restore the institution's prestige through modern programming, including Beethoven's opera Fidelio, as well as composing a Clarinet Quintet, a Grand duo concertant for clarinet and piano , and Piano Sonatas no. 2 and no. 3. On December 14, 1816, he was appointed to the same position at the Dresden Hoftheater, where he fulfilled his duties to the full, not forgetting to compose incidental music, as well as the famous Rondo brillant in D-flat major, known as "Invitation à la valse " (1819). On November 4, 1817, in Prague, he married the soprano Caroline Brandt, creator of the role of Silvana. In Dresden, he met the writer Friedrich Kind, who asked him to write a libretto adapted from a German subject, and agreed on a tale taken from a fantasy collection by Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun, Der Freischütz. The project took Weber three years to complete, and he also composed two Masses, a Polacca brillante for piano Op. 72 and the Trio for flute, cello and piano. After the incidental music for the play Preciosa, Der Freischütz finally premiered in Berlin on June 16, 1821. On the same day, Weber completed his Konzerstück in F minor for piano and orchestra. The opera that inaugurates Berlin's Neue Schauspielhaus lives up to the hype. In rivalry with Gaspare Spontini, the court's guarantor of Italian and French opera, Weber himself directed his work, which was greeted with triumph, imposing the new German opera throughout Europe, including an English version in London in 1824. His success in Vienna led to the commission of a new opera in the same style. Despite his tuberculosis, Weber took up the challenge, and his new work, Euryanthe, was presented in the Austrian capital on October 25, 1823. While the libretto by Wilhelmine von Chézy is hardly satisfactory, the music alone is remarkable. While at a spa in Marienbad, Weber met Charles Kemble, director of Covent Garden in London, who suggested he compose an English-language opera based on Shakespeare. Unhappy with the libretto, the composer preferred to stage Christoph Martin Wieland's poem Oberon, entrusting James Robinson Planché with the adaptation. The result, premiered in London on April 12, 1826, was another acclaimed masterpiece, the last of which he conducted to the end of his strength, eleven performances. Oberon was premiered in German in Dresden on December 23. The premiere proved to be posthumous: on the morning of June 5, 1826, Carl Maria von Weber was found dead in his bedroom, aged just 39. Buried in London, his ashes were transferred to Dresden in 1844. Richard Wagner, who owed him so much for his use of leitmotiv and recitative, orchestral scope and theatrical dramatization, delivered his eulogy.

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