First performed in Munich in 1811, the delightful one-act Singspiel Abu Hassan is based on a famous episode in “The Arabian Nights.” Set to music by Carl Maria von Weber, the opera features Abu Hassan (tenor) and his devoted wife

One of the most interesting cross-generational music styles is the theme and variations, particularly when a composer delves into the past to find his inspiration. How a work gets changed and modernized, its style developed, and a new work created

Carlo Gozzi’s play Turandot was first performed in Venice in 1762. It was a deliberate attempt to counter the new literary trend of bourgeois realism so prevalent in the works of Carlo Goldoni. When Friedrich Schiller fashioned his German translation,

Watching the Dancers In 1819 Carl Maria von Weber wrote a little not-dance piece, Aufforderung zum Tanz, for his bride Caroline. This work was important because it was the first work considered a concert-waltz, i.e., a waltz, but not one

Although Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz is frequently portrayed as the liberation of German cultures from foreign influences, we should not forget that a “veritable Freischütz mania flooded all England.” Productions of the opera opened in London in

When Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (The Marksman) was first produced at the Schauspielhaus in Berlin in June 1821, the musical world was stunned. Setting his career as a pianist and critic aside, Weber had created a work that

The soprano Margarethe Bernbrunn, née Lang, who frequently performed under the stage name “Adalbert Prix,” was described in the following terms. “Gretchen possessed a little plump seductive form, was about twenty years of age, and, in addition to her undoubted

Carl Maria von Weber : Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 73, J. 114 The comparatively late addition of the clarinet family to our modern catalogue of musical instruments at the turn of the 18th-century immediately spawned countless