Oberon has always been a problem opera, ever since Weber conducted it at Covent Garden in 1826. Compelled to fit his exquisite numbers into a ramshackle entertainment in which decor and stage machinery counted for more than music, he planned to rewrite it as a German opera on the return home which, tragically, he never made. There have been various stage versions, the best of them by Mahler, but the problems do not end with recording. A set made under Hans Muller-Kray for Period Thrift in the 1950s cut the dialogue completely. Kubelik’s 1971 DG set had some dialogue with the addition of an extra fairy, Droll. James Conlon used the Mahler version, with new text and new narration. The present set has the singers speaking a shortened version of the dialogue, with an English translation in the booklet that does not reproduce Planche’s dire original. This is probably the best solution, and provides a dramatic convention for the passage of the plot. Incidentally, every note of the score is included apart from the aria Weber was forced to substitute for his superior original by John Braham, who sang Huon.
Janowski has a light hand, listening (as do the record producers) to all Weber’s delicate combinations of instruments, judging tempos nicely (apart from some rather speedy Mermaids), generating a fine fury in what is the best storm in German opera before The Flying Dutchman. There are plenty of other Wagner adumbrations in the score. Some of them come in the opera’s most famous aria, “Ocean! thou mighty monster”, delivered with full Wagnerian relish by Birgit Nilsson for Kubelik. Inga Nielsen is less grand, but subtler: she describes the shifting moods of the sea with a beautiful ear for Weber’s detail, and can rise with a full tone to the occasion of the sun bursting forth, as well as spinning a long line in the beautiful Cavatina, “Mourn thou, poor heart”. Peter Seiffert is lighter, less lyrical than Placido Domingo for Kubelik, but he can produce a heroic ring and he is undaunted by some taxing vocal lines. His Preghiera, “Ruler of this awful hour”, is beautifully done, and he gets nimbly round the tricky Rondo, “I revel in hope and joy”. For Kubelik, Hermann Prey was an engaging Scherasmin; Bo Skovhus does not have the same lightness of touch, but Vesselina Kasarova manages more liveliness with her fairly strong tone than does Julia Hamari for Kubelik. Melinda Paulsen does well with Puck.
In sum, the new set is a very enjoyable, idiomatic performance, with delightful and perceptive ideas, at every turn, even if it would be difficult to give it preference over Kubelik’s powerful soloists.'