Carl Maria von Weber, a cousin of Mozart’s wife Constanze, was trained as a musician from childhood; he was the son of a versatile musician who had founded his own travelling theatre company. He made a favourable impression as a pianist and then as a music director, notably in the opera houses of Prague and Dresden. Here he introduced various reforms and was a pioneer of the craft of conducting without the use of violin or keyboard instrument. As a composer he won a lasting reputation with the first important Romantic German opera, Der Freischütz.

Operas
Weber’s early experience of the theatre brought precocious attempts at opera, his first such work performed in Freiburg in 1800, when he was 14. Pete...