Weber: Oberon

Carl Maria Von Weber (Composer), John Eliot Gardiner (Conductor), Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique (Orchestra), Monteverdi Choir (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Monteverdi Choir
• Orchestra: Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique
• Conductor: John Eliot Gardiner
• Composer: Carl Maria Von Weber
• Audio CD (August 9, 2005)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Philips / Decca
• ASIN: B0009AM5G8
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,708 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WHAT IS THIS LIKE?, July 4, 2006

By 

DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Weber: Oberon (Audio CD)

Weber does not really have as clear a `profile' or identity for the musical public as composers of similar stature, say Schumann or Chopin or Berlioz, have. Knowledge of his work (my own included) is usually patchy. As far as his operas go, even those of us well familiar with Freischuetz and Euryanthe rarely know Oberon, and this is not surprising since, as Gardiner says, it was thought all but unstageable throughout the 20th century.

During the first half of the 20th century Handel's operas were viewed in much the same way. We are learning better now, and it's time to think again about Oberon as well. There is a really excellent liner booklet accompanying this set containing thoughtful and informative essays both by Gardiner and by Richard Wigmore. Wigmore quotes some of the more unflattering comments on Planche's libretto, including Tovey's dictum that it is `the merest twaddle'. I will venture to take a different view and say that in my opinion it is really quite good. I read it as a pantomime book, and read like this it is certainly a lot more coherent and sequential than the libretto of The Magic Flute. I think I find a good deal of tongue-in-cheek whimsy in the vagaries of the plot, and if I'm right Planche has really had the last laugh on Tovey and the others. For this performance, sung in English, Gardiner has had the excellent idea of connecting the musical numbers with a spoken narrative, read by Roger Allam. Gardiner has written this narrative himself, and he needs to be complimented on the way he has caught the Christmas-pantomime idiom.

As for the music, it doesn't recall The Magic Flute to me nor indeed anything by Mozart, to whom Weber was related by marriage. The fairy music stands comparison with Mendelssohn's, but you would never mistake it for Mendelssohn's. This is the familiar Weber of Freischuetz and Euryanthe, and that ought to be commendation enough. Weber was a melodist to rival Berlioz and even Verdi himself. Searching for comparisons, I thought momentarily of Verdi's Il Corsaro with its parallel theme of the rescue of a captive princess from a wicked Caliph, but that comparison goes nowhere, or only as far as that both composers were born theatrical dramatists. The comparison with Schumann's Manfred probably has more going for it, even though Schumann had no theatrical sense whatsoever. What the two works have in common is the treatment of the supernatural in early romantic English literature and the way German composers of the period handled it. Looking forward rather than back, I can't say I find much foreshadowing of Wagner. What I do find is strong suggestions of one of Brahms's least-known and finest masterpieces his dramatic cantata Rinaldo, the very work in which I first heard and admired the tenor Steve Davislim who sings the part of Huon here.

Weber can stand on his own feet. I love his heavenly lightness of step and lightness of touch. His orchestral writing was praised by no less a virtuoso of that art than Berlioz, and his melodies sing for themselves. Both the performance and the recording here strike me as first class. You will need a fairly high volume-setting, and the singers are not brought artificially close to the microphone. Davislim has the biggest part and that suits me very well, but at this early stage I have not noticed any weaknesses at all among the soloists, who might all be native speakers of English as far as elocution goes. The chorus is, very properly, a small one, with corresponding benefit to their clarity of diction too. The orchestral players perform with both fire and refinement, and Gardiner's love of the beautiful score is as apparent from his direction as it is from his commentary.

The composer died aged 40 shortly after the first performance of Oberon, a victim of consumption as Chopin would be some years later. There is not the smallest shadow of death over his last score, and indeed his music seems to me to be a celebration of life as very little other music can be said to be to the same extent. I for one am more than glad of this opportunity to visit one of his neglected monuments, which I expect to do frequently. The year 2006 is now half-way advanced, and I have no way of knowing what my greatest musical discovery may be by the time it has run its course, but this one is going to be hard to surpass.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful recording of Weber's masterpiece, June 26, 2008

By 

Suddhaseel Sen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Weber: Oberon (Audio CD)

Except for a non-commercial DVD from 1986, the year of Weber's death bicentenary, under Seiji Ozawa, Weber's Oberon has never been recorded in English, the language in which Weber set the libretto. This is the first official recording in the original language of the full score. Translation into German does not solve the problems of the libretto, and it is the charm of the music that really counts, though I would agree with Mr. Bryson that Planché's libretto is not half as bad as it is made out to be. Gardiner's linking narrative makes the opera quite viable, at least on disc, and it involves neither a radical rewriting of the libretto (as did composer and novelist Anthony Burgess, who also arranged the overture for guitar quartet), nor interpolation of musical material, a method adopted by other admirers of Weber in attempts to rescue the score from oblivion, such as Franz Wüllner, Donald Tovey and Gustav Mahler (whose version has been recorded by James Conlon).

Der Freischütz and Euryanthe have had their champions among German composers and musicologists: the former is regarded as the cornerstone of German Romantic opera, while the latter, with its anticipation of Wagner's Leitmotiv technique, occupies a central position in the historiography of German opera. Oberon's champions have come from other countries, especially France. The score, which has been repeatedly praised for its orchestration and melodic beauty by composers such as Berlioz, Chabrier, Debussy and Ravel, shows how much more Weber was than being simply a forerunner of Wagner. True, the score is occasionally uneven, partly because Weber, who was dying of tuberculosis, quarried previous works, some of them as early as his first opera, Peter Schmoll, for musical material, in his hurry to meet the deadline. Even in this regard, the opera has some delightful surprises to offer: for instance, the chorus in Act 3, "For thee hath beauty..." (CD 2, track 20), is based on Weber's cantata, L'accoglienza (it has never been recorded), and what a delightful piece it is, especially in its harmonic surprises towards the end! The score of Oberon, even in the parts derived from previous works, thus offers glimpses into some of Weber's best unknown pieces; the whole, as Gerald Abraham observed, contains numbers that are unsurpassed in the whole of Romantic opera (Concise Oxford History of Music).

Fortunately, Gardiner and his forces offer a magnificent reading of the score. The only comparable version is that of Janowski (sung in German, for RCA), which is marginally better recorded and, unlike Kubelík's version, offers the complete score. However, Gardiner has the sharpest ear among all for orchestral details - in the overture, for example, his emphasis on the trumpet parts (CD 1, track 1, 5'14) enhances the brilliance and the excitement in a way no other reading of the overture does, save that by Wolfgang Sawallisch in his excellent set of Weber overtures on EMI. Again, in "I revel in hope and joy," Gardiner's imaginative attention to detail brings out the beauties of Weber's delightful woodwind scoring (CD 2, track 18, 0'32; this piece is left out in Kubelík's recording). But Marek Janowski is very good too: as mentioned earlier, his orchestra is better recorded, and he has a superb cast of singers, especially in Inga Nielsen (Rezia), who manages to veer very successfully between the Wagnerian voice required for "Ocean, thou mighty monster" and the lighter voice required for some of Rezia's other numbers, and Peter Seiffert (Hüon). The Kubelík recording (DG) has a star-studded cast, but his orchestra isn't as good as that of Janowski or Gardiner, and the score is slightly abridged. James Conlon (EMI) uses the Mahler version, but Ben Heppner (Hüon) sounds strained; the recording quality, too, leaves something to be desired. If you want a recording in English, Gardiner's is the version to go for, while Janowski's version is equally recommendable.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A triumphant resurrection!, December 28, 2005

By 

Robert Heath (Lyon, France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Weber: Oberon (Audio CD)

This is not an opera and should be considered as belonging to a different genre almost by itself. Weber's music is startlingly beautiful. The cast is highly accomplished and the Monteverdi Choir true to form. The interpretation is exquisite and the remarkable dynamics obtained from singers and musicians alike are faithfully captured by a successful recording. Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique reproduce the excitement of a work that marks the transition from the classical to the romantic style. It's not hard to imagine why the première in 1826 at Covent Garden's Theatre Royal caused so much excitement.