Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of Carl Maria von Weber’s death

Friday, June 5, 2026

Carl Maria von Weber died on 5 June 1826, at the age of 40 in London, where he had premiered his final opera, Oberon, König der Elfen, at the Haymarket Theatre just a few months earlier. The original English title was actually Oberon, or the Elf King’s Oath, and librettist James R. Planché described it as “a romantic and Fairy opera.” The work indeed exemplified the “fairy opera,” a typically English genre in which – in addition to the music – spectacular stage machinery, magic scenes, dance, and pantomime all played an important role. As Weber himself observed in a letter to his librettist: “The cut of an english opera is certainly very different from a german one” – a fact that made it rather difficult for the work to gain popularity outside of England. To this day, Oberon unfortunately remains much less popular and is performed less frequently than the Freischütz, Weber’s best-known opera. Despite its dramaturgically clumsy libretto, however, it is considered as one of Weber’s most significant music-dramatical works, and some of its excerpts, such as the overture or Rezia’s grand scene and aria – recorded even by the famous Maria Callas – are still frequently heard today.

The RISM database contains a total of 274 sources related to Weber’s Oberon, including autograph sketches, performance materials for the entire opera, as well as numerous arrangements, variations, and potpourris based on individual numbers, for a wide variety of instrumentations. The image above shows one of the numerous autograph sketches that once belonged to the composer’s family and are now preserved in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. The sketch of Huon’s prayer “Ruler of this awful hour” (RISM ID no. 1001192984; RISM Catalog | RISM Online) was penned by Weber on 10 April 1826.

Anyone interested in the genesis of Weber’s last opera, the circumstances of its London premiere, or accounts of its reception is welcome to run searches on the website of the Carl Maria von Weber-Gesamtausgabe, a project producing a complete edition of the composer’s works and supported, like RISM, by the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz. Here you can explore Weber’s entire correspondence, his diaries, as well as his published writings. A search for the term “Oberon” yields a total of 1,297 results, including 86 diary entries alone.

Image: Carl Maria von Weber, sketch for Huon’s preghiera “Ruler of this awful hour” from Oberon, London, 10 April 1826 (excerpt), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, music collection, shelf mark: Mus.ms.autogr. Weber, C. M. v., WFN 2 (2). Image source

Category: Musical anniversaries