| Silvana | |
|---|---|
| Opera by Carl Maria von Weber | |
&sq=&lang=&file=File:Carl_Maria_von_Weber_-_Silvana_-_play_bill_of_the_first_performance_1810.png) Playbill of the premiere | |
| Librettist | Franz Carl Hiemer |
| Language | German |
| Premiere | 16 September 1810 |
Silvana (J. 87) is an opera by Carl Maria von Weber, first performed at the Nationaltheater Frankfurt on 16 September 1810. The libretto, by Franz Carl Hiemer, is a reworking of an earlier, unsuccessful opera by Weber, Das Waldmädchen. Weber also reused music from the same piece in Silvana. It has been characterized as a somewhat unstable combination of emerging individualism with conventional techniques;[1][2] however, the premiere was moderately successful, and the Berlin premiere was met with an enthusiastic reception.[3] It is the earliest Weber opera to have survived in its complete form; older operatic works are either fragmentary or entirely lost.
Weber used a melody from a discarded aria for the opera to compose the popular Seven Variations on a Theme from Silvana for clarinet and piano. He used the same melody for the theme-and-variations first movement of his Sonata No. 5 in A major (from the Six sonates progressives for piano and violin obbligato, J 99-104).
- ^ Warrack 1976, p. 78.
- ^ Brown 2002a.
- ^ Brown 2002b.