Weber - Oberon / van der Walt, Nielsen, Seiffert, Kasarova, Skovhus, Paulsen; Janowski

Musically and in its plot and atmosphere, Oberon owes something to Mozart's Magic Flute. But Mozart's crazy mixed-up masterpiece ventures just inside the borders of Romanticism. The last opera of Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) goes deeply into Romantic atmosphere and mystique. Its rather disjointed but colorful libretto magically takes a medieval French knight (tenor Peter Seiffert) and the Caliph of Baghdad's daughter (soprano Inga Nielsen) through a series of trials (shipwreck on a desert island, capture by pirates, enslavement, and sexual harassment) to test the strength of their love. The music is magnificent, looking ahead to Wagner as well as back to Mozart. Conductor Marek Janowski does it full justice, uses a better edition than his chief rival on records, Kubelik, and has a first-class cast. --Joe McLellan