Oberon (opera)

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Operas by Carl Maria von Weber
Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn (1802) Silvana (1810) Abu Hassan ( 1811) Der Freischütz (1821) Die drei Pintos (1821) Euryanthe (1823) Oberon (1826)
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Oberon, or The Elf King's Oath is a romantic opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber to an English libretto by James Robinson Planche, after a poem by Christoph Martin Wieland. It was first performed at Covent Garden, London on 12 April 1826. It was later translated into German by Theodore Hell, and it is in this German translation that the opera is most frequently performed.

Commissioned by Charles Kemble, Weber undertook the project against his doctor's advice for financial reasons. He travelled to London to complete the music before the successful premiere of the opera; however, he destroyed his health in the process and died in London on 5 June of the same year.

Weber was dissatisfied by the structure of the opera as it was produced in London, and intended to revise the work on his return to Germany, but died in London before starting work on the revision. Since then, many composers and librettists have revised the work, notably Franz Wüllner, Gustav Mahler (who, preparing a new performing version, rearranged some of the numbers and composed some linking music based on material from the existing score) and novelist-composer Anthony Burgess, who wrote a new libretto for Oberon and arranged the famous overture for guitar quartet. Also Franz Liszt made an arrangement of the overture in 1843 for solo piano (S.574).

The most famous numbers are the overture (passages of which are quoted by Berlioz in his Treatise on Instrumentation) and the aria Ozean, du Ungeheuer (Ocean, thou Mighty Monster).

The first commercial recording was conducted by Rafael Kubelík, who directed a star-studded cast featuring Birgit Nilsson as Reiza and Placido Domingo as Sir Huon of Bordeaux. There have been several other recordings, notably those by James Conlon (Mahler's version) on EMI, Marek Janowski (a note-complete recording, well-recorded and featuring an excellent cast) for RCA, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner (who records the original English version on period instruments in a thrilling account of the score) for Philips.