important people. Agatha, the heroine,
has a prayer of exquisite beauty, which still is often heard as a
church tune. And in contrast with these elements was the weird and
uncanny music of Zamiel, the Satanic spirit of the wood, and the
strange incantation scene in the Wolf's Glen at midnight, where the
magic balls are cast. The story was thoroughly German, and the music
not only German and well suited to the story, but distinctly original
and charming of itself. In this work, perhaps first of any opera,
Weber made use of what has since been known as "leading
motives"--characteristic melodic phrases appropriate to Zamiel and
Agatha. The instrumentation was very graphic, and as Weber had been
brought up upon the stage, there were many novelties of a scenic kind.
In fact, the work marked as distinct an epoch as Wagner's "Nibelungen
Ring," and what is more to the point, it was one of the operative
influences affecting the young Wagner, as he tells with considerable
care in his autobiography. His next effort was a comic opera, the
"Three Pintos," which was never finished. Then came "_Euryanthe_"
performed at Vienna in 1823 with the most extraordinary success. This
work is said to have been the model upon which Wagner created his
"_Lohengrin_." When it was produced in Berlin in 1825, the enthusiasm
was yet greater and more remarkable than in Vienna. In 1825 he
composed "_Oberon_," the first of the operas in which the fairy
principle has prominent exemplification. This was produced in London
early in 1826. But by this time Weber's health had become completely
broken, and he died there of overwork and fatigue. He was laid to his
rest, to the music of Mozart's Requiem, in the chapel at Moorsfields
in London.

Weber was the first of the romantic composers--the first, at least, to
gain the ear of the public. These operas, with their beautifully
descriptive music, in which voices and orchestra co-operate with the
action and scene as one, were composed at the same time that the young
Franz Schubert was improvising his beautiful songs in Vienna. From one
end of Germany to the other, and in all Europe, these operas made
their way. "_Der Freischuetz_" has lasted fifty years, and is still
presented with success. More than that, as already noticed, Weber
furnished the model, or point of departure, for a multitude of smaller
composers, who developed the opera in various side directions; and
last, but not least, for Richard Wagner himsel