Rezia’s suitor, rescues the maiden, and with the aid of the magic horn carries her off from the palace, while his esquire Sherasmin performs the same kind office for Fatima, Rezia’s attendant.  On their way home they encounter a terrific storm, raised by the power of Oberon to try their constancy.  They are ship-wrecked, and Rezia is carried off by pirates to Tunis, whilst Huon is left for dead upon the beach.  At Tunis more troubles are in store for the hapless pair.  Huon, who has been transported by the fairies across the sea, finds his way into the house of the Emir, where Rezia is in slavery.  There he is unlucky enough to win the favour of Roshana, the Emir’s wife, and before he can escape from her embraces he is discovered by the Emir himself, and condemned to be burned alive.  Rezia proclaims herself his wife, and she also is condemned to the stake; but at this crisis Oberon intervenes.  The lovers have been tried enough, and their constancy is rewarded.  They are transported to the court of Charlemagne, where a royal welcome awaits them.

Although written for England, ‘Oberon’ has never achieved much popularity in this, or indeed in any country.  The fairy music is exquisite throughout, but the human interest of the story is after all slight, and Weber, on whom the hand of death was heavy as he wrote the score, failed to infuse much individuality into his characters.  ‘Oberon’ was his last work, and he died in London soon after it was produced.  During the last few years of his life he had been engaged in a desultory way upon the composition of a comic opera, ‘Die drei Pintos,’ founded upon a Spanish subject.  He left this in an unfinished state, but some time after his death it was found that the manuscript sketches and notes for the work were on a scale sufficiently elaborate to give a proper idea of what the composer’s intentions with regard to the work really were.  The work of arrangement was entrusted to Herr G. Mahler, and under his auspices ‘Die drei Pintos’ was actually produced, though with little success.

At the present time the only opera of Weber which can truthfully be said to belong to the current repertory is ‘Der Freischuetz,’ and even this is rarely performed out of Germany.  The small amount of favour which ‘Euryanthe’ and ‘Oberon’ enjoy is due, as has been already pointed out, chiefly to the weakness of their libretti, yet it seems strange that the man to whom the whole tendency of modern opera is due should hold so small a place in our affections.  The changes which Weber and his followers effected, though less drastic, were in their results fully as important as those of Gluck.  In the orchestra as well as on the stage he introduced a new spirit, a new point of view.  What modern music owes to him may be summed up in a word.  Without Weber, Wagner would have been impossible.