‘Yesterday, with genuine pleasure I attended a kind rehearsal of the opera ‘Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn’ by my pupil Mr. Carl Maria von Weber, and I cannot help attesting with truth, [...] that I consider it only right and proper that I recommend this, my favourite pupil, be welcomed by the entire musical and sensitive world’. Johann Michael Haydn, 1802 After the artful overture, which may make an absolute claim to autonomy, Peter Schmoll shows a colourful succession of a total of 20 numbers, as was customary in the musical comedies composed in this manner for about three decades. In Peter Schmoll, we see glimpses of the ‘typical’ Weber, based primarily on the melodic idea, such as we know him today from Der Freischütz, written in 1817.
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