Weber, Oberon Overture

Carl Maria von Weber was a man of ideals and he would not hesitate to put his thoughts into words and use them to influence the public. His concert reviews and programme notes give us countless examples of his attempts to steer the audience away from the Italian operas that had degraded into a mere sensuous delight with little substance. For Weber, opera stood for unity and character, and these values can be seen in Oberon and its overture.

The plot of Oberon operates on two levels: on the surface we have the heroic love of Sir Huon de Bordeaux and on the deeper level we see Oberon’s efforts to reconcile with his fairy queen. In fact, one of the most telling moments in the opera is when this deeper thread comes to the fore in Oberon’s aria towards the end of Act II. Oberon seems on the one hand to be regretting the rift with his queen but on the other hand, he is reluctant to admit any wrongdoing when he placed honour and duty above love, and Weber’s setting of this is ingenious: Oberon’s regret is reflected by his distant memory of a sweet love and this love theme is actually the 2^nd subject in the exposition of the overture which has been extensively elaborated in the development but missing in the recapitulation; having kept the audience waiting for an hour or so, the theme reappears, out of nowhere, in a foreign key and dwarfed by two chivalric outer sections, hence dismissing love’s significance.

In terms of the dramatic unity, Oberon does not lose out to any other operas but in terms of colours, it falls short of Der Freischütz. If we compare the two overtures, yes we will find characterisations of the world of the Fairies and the noble court of Charlemagne in Oberon but they are, somewhat ironically, delightful rather than substantial as in Freischütz. The difference in the musical content is understandable considering the fact that they address different topics – the Oberon has a slightly comic element and the Freischütz deals with the opposition of good and evil. There is no reason why we should rate one genre over the other but it nevertheless shows how much opera composers such as Weber were dependent on having a good libretto to work on, and it was something that Weber had always missed throughout his life.

October 2012