Weber: Silvana
Soloists
Hagen Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus
Gerhard Markson
As I said at the conclusion of opera 51 I am now turning to German Romantic opera. It is natural to start with Weber as Der Freischutz as that is really the foundation of everything that follows. But Freischutz did not spring from nowhere and this earlier opera (the first of his that has survived in complete form) shows the composer gradually finding his voice. I found it a charming work with a lot of signs of what was to come. All the elements are there: drama, comedy, melodrama, dance and choruses. It doesn’t quite have the maturity of the better known Weber operas but it is clear that even at an early age he was a master of the operatic form. I included another Weber opera, Abu Hassan, in last year’s project https://andrew365newpieces.blogspot.com/2025/09/weber-abu-hassan.html. This was a promising start for this part of the project.
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