Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria von Weber was a German composer, conductor, virtuoso pianist, guitarist and critic who was one of the first significant composers of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas, he was a crucial figure in the development of German "Romantische Oper" (Romantic Opera) and laid the foundations for Wagner's later reforms. The young Weber's musical training was conducted against the background of the vicissitudes of his father's career as an itinerant violinist and impresario who introduced his son to his profession with a hands-on approach that fired the boy's love of the theatre. His early teachers included Michael Haydn and the Abbé Vogler, and it was Vogler who recommended the then 17-year-old youth for the post of conductor at the Breslau Theatre. Weber left the post two years later and, after a period as intendant to Duke Eugen of Württemberg-Öls, became secretary to the duke's brother, Ludwig, in Stuttgart in 1807. Throughout this period he continued to take an interest in literature and poetry. In 1817, he was appointed Royal Saxon Kapellmeister at the German Opera in Dresden, where he remained until his death nine years later. Although he also wrote instrumental music, Weber is remembered above all for three operas, Der Freischutz, which earned him a European reputation, Euryanthe, and Oberon, which was first performed in English at Covent Garden. Following in the wake of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Beethoven's Fidelio, Weber's operas represent a further stage on the road to the goal of a national German opera that was to be reached only a few years later in Wagner's early music dramas. Already a sick man when he arrived in London to superintend the rehearsals of Oberon in 1826, Weber died in the English capital from pulmonary tuberculosis and was buried in Moorfields Chapel. In 1844, Wagner arranged for his mortal remains to be brought back to Dresden and delivered a funeral oration worthy of the occasion.