Oberon Overture

“I’m waiting in agony for a good libretto…I don’t feel right when I haven’t got an opera in hand.” The sad fact is that Weber, the most gifted opera composer working in Germany before Wagner, only once found a libretto anywhere near worthy of him and, as a direct consequence, wrote only one opera which survives in the regular repertoire today. Even that work, Der Freischütz, has its problems but it is a model of the librettist’s art in comparison with the texts of the next two operas he completed Euryanthe and Oberon. The ultimate examples of the Weber dilemma, both are abundant in music of the highest quality and both are virtually unstageable.

The consolation is that Weber’s genius is most succinctly and most engagingly represented in his overtures. Not all of the ten surviving examples are masterpieces but, while there are some amusing oddities, there is not one failure. It is almost as though Weber knew that his reputation would one day depend not    so much on the operas he was so eager to write as on their overtures.

The plainly incompetent libretto of Weber’s last opera Oberon – commissioned by Covent Garden and first performed there in 1826 – is the work of James Robinson Planché who based it on Oberon by the 18th-century German poet, Christoph Martin Wieland, which is itself based the French medieval romance Huon de Bordeaux. Wieland’s poem includes elements recycling Oberon’s dispute with Titania in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the poetic atmosphere of which is somehow reflected in Weber’s Oberon overture even though it is not actually based on it.

The horn call heard in the magical opening bars actually anticipates the sound of the golden horn Oberon has awarded to Huon to help him through adventures that will reunite Oberon and Titania while furthering Charlemagne’s crusading ambitions. Even so the gently up-curving horn call, the hushed answer on muted strings and the triple piano staccato woodwind is as poetic as anything in literature, Shakespeare included – as Mendelssohn seems to have understood. The magic is dispelled by a fortissimo chord from the whole orchestra and an Allegro con fuoco, featuring highly energetic strings, is based on the music that accompanies Huon’s mission to Baghdad. The horn call is heard again in the middle of the overture and is this time followed by the triumphant celebration of the success of Huon’s mission and the reconciliation of Oberon and Titania. The brilliant coda is based on “My husband, my husband, we are saved” sung to Huon by Reiza, daughter of the Caliph of Baghdad

Gerald Larner © 2018