The ninth son of an infantry officer who devoted himself to music after his niece Constanta married Mozart, Weber receives his first music lessons from his half-brother Frederick, then studies in Salzburg with Michael Haydn and in Munich with Calcher and Valesi (composition and singing). At the age of thirteen he composed his first opera (which has not come down to us). He followed a short period of work with his father in musical lithography, then perfected his knowledge with Abbot Vogler in Vienna
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The ninth son of an infantry officer who devoted himself to music after his niece Constanta married Mozart, Weber receives his first music lessons from his half-brother Frederick, then studies in Salzburg with Michael Haydn and in Munich with Calcher and Valesi (composition and singing). At the age of thirteen he composed his first opera (which has not come down to us). He followed a short period of work with his father in musical lithography, then perfected his knowledge with Abbot Vogler in Vienna and Darmstadt. He moved from place to place, working as a pianist and conductor; in 1817 he married the singer Caroline Brand and organized a theater of German opera in Dresden, in contrast to the theater of Italian opera under the direction of Morlacca. Exhausted by much organizational work and terminally ill, after a period of treatment in Marienbad (1824) he staged in London the opera "Oberon" (1826), received with enthusiasm. Operas: Silvana (1810), Abu Hasan (1811), Prezioza (1821), Free Gunner (1821), Tri Pinto (1888), Euryant (1823), Oberon (1826). Weber was still a son of the XVIII century: he was sixteen years younger than Beethoven, he died almost a year before him, but seems to be a musician more modern than the classics or the same Schubert. Weber was not only a musician-creator, a brilliant, virtuoso pianist, conductor of the famous orchestra, but also a great organizer. In this he was like Gluck; only he had a more difficult task, because he worked in the squalid surroundings of Prague and Dresden and had neither the strong character nor the indisputable glory of Gluck. . In the field of opera, he proved to be a rare phenomenon in Germany - one of the few native opera composers. His vocation was determined without difficulty: from the age of fifteen he knew what the scene required. His life was so active, so eventful, that it seems much longer than Mozart’s, in reality, only four years. When Weber introduced The Free Gunner in 1821, he greatly anticipated the romanticism of composers such as Bellini and Donizetti, who would appear ten years later, or Rossini, who staged William Tell in 1829. In general, 1821 was a significant preparation of romanticism in music: at this time Beethoven composed the Thirty-First Sonata op. 110 for piano, Schubert presents the song "The Forest King" and begins the Eighth Symphony, "Unfinished." Already in the overture of The Free Arrow, Weber moves toward the future and is freed from the influence of the theater of the recent past, Spurs' Faust or Hoffmann's Undina, or the French opera that influenced these two of his predecessors. When Weber approached Eurianta, Einstein writes, his sharpest antipode to Spontini had in a sense cleared the way for him; at the same time, Spontini only gave the classical opera series colossal, monumental dimensions through mass scenes and emotional strain. A new, more romantic tone appears in Euriante, and if the audience did not immediately appreciate this opera, then it was deeply appreciated by composers of the next generations. The work of Weber, who laid the foundations of German national opera (along with Mozart’s “Magic Flute”), led to the double significance of his operatic heritage, as Giulio Confalonieri writes well: “As an orthodox romantic, Weber found in legends and folk legends a source of music devoid of notes, but ready to sound ...” Along with these elements, he also wished to express his own temperament freely: the unexpected transitions from one tone to the opposite, the daring convergence of extremes coexisting with each other in accordance with the new laws of romantic Franco-German music, were brought to the limit by the composer, whose state of mind was constantly restless and feverish due to consumption. This duality, which seems to contradict style unity and really violates it, gave rise to a painful desire to escape, by virtue of the very choice of life, from the last meaning of existence: from reality - with it, perhaps, only in the magical "Oberon" reconciliation is supposed, and even then partial and incomplete.