The German composer Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) is best known for his operas, of which he wrote 10 between 1798 and 1826. His first four exist in various states: Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins (de) (comp. 1798) is completely lost; two fragments survive for Das Waldmädchen (1800); the libretto to Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn (1803) is lost; and only three numbers from Rübezahl (comp. 1804–05) survive. Weber's mature operas—Silvana (1810), Abu Hassan (1811), Der Freischütz (1821), Die drei Pintos (comp. 1820–21), Euryanthe (1823), Oberon (1826)—all survive intact; they were all performed within his lifetime, except Die drei Pintos which was posthumously completed by Gustav Mahler. His contributions to the genre were crucial in the development of German Romantische Oper (German Romantic Opera) and its national identity, exhibiting much influence on Richard Wagner. Der Freischütz, his most famous and significant work, remains among the most revered German operas.
After his family moved to Munich in 1798, the 13 year old Weber began study with Johann Nepomuk Kalcher, under whose supervision he wrote his first opera, the Singspiel Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins; the work was never performed. Two years later in Freiburg, he embarked on his second opera, Das Waldmädchen, to a libretto by Carl von Steinsberg, whose traveling company premiered it the same year. The two surviving fragments of the work show little sophistication, although it received moderate success. Weber's next opera, Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn, was written in Salzburg under the supervision of Michael Haydn to a libretto by Josef Türk after Carl Gottlob Cramer's popular novel of the same name. Premiered in 1803 in Augsburg, the work did not match the novel's popularity and was subsequently forgotten. In 1804 Weber was appointed Kapellmeister at the Breslau Opera and worked with a libretto by the theatre's director Johann Gottlieb Rhode (after a story by Johann Karl August Musäus), to produce Rübezahl. The work was never performed and the three extant fragments show little improvement in his craft. After his two-year tenure, Weber spent time in modern-day Pokój, Opole Voivodeship and eventually moved to Stuttgart where he began Silvana.
