Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz

The Sinfonica Nacional, Ellie’s orchestra, just performed a concert version of Weber’s Freischütz, leaving out the extensive spoken dialogue. Mercifully so, even if it meant not quite getting the opera’s story. While I couldn’t follow the Spanish of the supertitles, I also didn’t get much of the German of the singers. I hasten to add that that’s neither the fault of chorus and soloists, but just an example of the problematic relationship between music and text in just about most, if not quite all, of standard operas. While spoken dialogue would have been more intelligible, my elderly hearing would not have helped.

  Freischütz is the first opera I ever saw, age ten or so, in Heidelberg (where I  was born), about eighty years ago. Some of its melodies also became familiar because they were included in my first piano lessons around the same time.

   So what about the version in 2017 Mexico City? A most credible performance that managed to preserve the opera’s most Germanic character. It is not surprising that it is seldom performed outside Germany, because it is not only German in language and story line, but also in its musical shape. While not consistently so, its structure is strophic, suggestive of a Wanderlied; the inventiveness of its tunes lifts it above the mundane, as well as the extensive use of a chorus and some clever orchestration.

   Is it a great opera? Eminently worth hearing, but not “great.” It is different from what was going at the time—Rossini operas were much performed and Weber—sort of—anticipates Wagner. Mozart is the ancestor of the Freischütz, though it doesn’t measure up to the Zauberflöte, not even to the earlier Mozart German opera with spoken dialogue, the Entführung aus dem Serail. I felt slightly guilty when, while listening to Weber’s music, now and then the thought popped into my mind: well done, but not in Wolfgang Amadeus’s class.