When Carl was seventeen, the father decided he should go to Vienna, for there he would meet all the great musicians of the time.  The boy was at the most impressionable age:  he was lively, witty, with pleasant manners and amiable disposition; he soon became a favorite in the highest musical circles.  It was a gay life and the inexperienced youth yielded to its allurements.  In the meantime he did some serious studying under the famous Abbe Vogler.  The following year the Abbe recommended him to the conductorship of the Breslau Opera House.  This was a very difficult post for a boy of eighteen, and he encountered much jealousy and opposition from the older musicians, who did not relish finding themselves under the leadership of such a youth.  A year served to disgust him with the work and he resigned.  During the year he had found time to compose most of his opera “Rubezahl.”

For the next few years there were many “ups and downs” in Carl’s life.  From Breslau he went to Carlsruhe, and entered the service of Prince Eugene.  For about a year he was a brilliant figure at the Court.  Then war clouds gathered and the gay Court life came to an end.  Music under the present conditions could no longer support him, as the whole social state of Germany had altered.  The young composer was forced to earn his livelihood in some way, and now became private secretary to Prince Ludwig of Wurtemburg, whose Court was held at Stuttgart.  The gay, dissolute life at the Court was full of temptation for our young composer, yet he found considerable time for composition; his opera “Sylvana” was the result, besides several smaller things.  During the Stuttgart period, his finances became so low, that on one occasion he had to spend several days in prison for debt.  Determined to recruit his fortunes, he began traveling to other towns to make known his art.  In Mannheim, Darmstadt and Baden, he gave concerts, bringing out in each place some of his newer pieces, and earning enough at each concert to last a few weeks, when another concert would keep the wolf from the door a little longer.

In 1810, when he was twenty-four, he finished his pretty opera “Abu Hassan,” which, on the suggestion of his venerable master, Vogler, he dedicated to the Grand Duke.  The Duke accepted the dedication with evident pleasure, and sent Carl a purse of gold, in value about two hundred dollars.  The opera was performed on February 6, 1811, and its reception was very gratifying to the composer.  The Grand Duke took one hundred and twenty tickets and the performance netted over two hundred florins clear profit.  It was after this that Carl Maria went on a tour of the principal German cities and gave concerts in Munich, Prague, Berlin, Dresden and other places.  He was everywhere welcomed, his talents and charming manners winning friends everywhere.  Especially in Prague he found the highest and noblest aristocracy ready to bid him welcome.

Weber paid a visit to Liebich, director of the Prague theater, almost as soon as he arrived in town.  The invalid director greeted him warmly.