Der Freischuetz

 On the eve of his wedding, Max, der Freischuetz (The Marksman) is having trouble with his gun.  He hasn't hit anything for a month and, at a target shooting competition in the Bohemian village where he lives, his bullets all go astray.  The townsfolk are unforgiving.  As Max sulks, they mock him.  Do you remember this gesture?  Extend your right index finger and, then, stroke back and forth along its length with the pointer finger of the other hand.  For some reason, this gesture means "Shame on you!", not only here in rural Minnesota, but, also, in the deep and dark German forests at the end of the 30 years war.  Choruses of nubile peasant girls dance about the sullen huntsman gesturing shame upon him and a choir of baritones and basses, strapping foresters, also deride the unfortunate fellow.  Max's beautiful and virtuous betrothed, Agatha, is fearful.  (You don't have to be Dr. Freud to decipher some of this imagery.)  On the morrow, Max will have to shoot true in front of all the town (and the formidable game warden who is also Agathe's father, Kuno) to earn his right to wed Agatha -- and it looks increasingly unlikely that he will hit the mark.  What's a fellow to do?

Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischuetz is an1821opera and a sort of bargain basement, Dollar General parody of Faust. Max hurries away from the convivial gathering to make a deal with the devil, the so-called Black Huntsman, Samiel.  He is encouraged to this desperate measure by Caspar, a rival for the affections of Agatha.  Caspar has previously done business with Samiel in the Wolf's Glen, a nasty ravine full of corpses and slimy serpentine creatures that seems to serve as a sort of garbage dump for the villagers. Caspar gives Max a magic bullet that he has acquired from the Black Huntsman and he uses the cursed ammo to shoot down an inoffensive eagle.  At that same moment, in the village, a picture of one of Agatha's ancestor, a scowling ancient head forester, drops off the wall, striking Annchen, Agatha's frisky gal pal.  (The two women sing duets about the upcoming marriage and Agatha's recent dream, a foreboding vision in which she imagines herself a white dove shot out of the air by Max).  At midnight, with Caspar, Max consults the devil and, later, the revived corpse of his mother. He and Casper laboriously cast seven bullets -- six will unerringly hit their target; the seventh round belongs to the devil.  The two hunters divvy up the ammo and go their separate ways.  Caspar who has three rounds wastes them on a fox; Max, who isn't much brighter, shoots some other critters and ends up with only the devil's bullet to use on the morning of his wedding.

Before the wedding, a garland is delivered to Agatha.  The box turns out to contain a funeral wreath.  Improvising a garland from white roses given to her by a holy hermit, also a resident in the woods, Agatha goes to the target-shooting competition.  Max fires the devil's bullet which seems to strike both Caspar and Agatha -- they fall to the ground in a sort of swoon.  Kuno, Agatha's father and the game warden, denounces Max for having trafficked with the dark forces.  But Agatha seems to have only fainted.  (Caspar is pierced by the devil's bullet and dies.)  As she revives, the Hermit appears as a deus ex machina.  He pronounces forgiveness on the erring Max and, it is agreed, that after a year's probation the hero can wed Agatha. Kuno decides that all of this mischief was caused by the village's tradition of requiring men to target-shoot for their brides -- he decides that the town should modernize and join the rest of the 17th century and, so, abolishes the custom.  There is a final chorus of praise to God and all ends on a happy note.  

The opera is goofy, but appealing, and contains a broad variety of music -- robust choruses, trios and quartets, as well as dramatic and spooky horror movie stuff (for instance, the slithery chromatics that characterize the Wolf's Glen) -- some of the occult themes sound a bit like Mozart's third act music in Don Giovanni and, in general, the opera, containing extended passages of Singspiel and, even, spoken dialogue, is similar to passages in The Magic Flute.  The libretto, the stormy overture, and the exotic subject matter is all exemplary of German romanticism -- the opera has a patriotic, echt-Deutsch aspect, themes that seem derived from the Grimm brother's Maerchen, and lots of boozy beer-hall music -- drinking songs and choruses sung by doughty huntsmen.  The scene in which Caspar and Max forge the magic bullets will return in German opera thirty years later in Wagner's Ring, specifically the forging of Siegfried's sword in Act I of that opera.  (In fact, Wagner's love for Weber's music, particularly the turbulent overture to Der Freischuetz inspired the young man to learn to play the piano and, later, become a composer himself and there are echoes of Weber's music throughout Wagner's works.)  The opera is audience-pleasing and relatively short -- it's about two hours long in the version that I saw.

You can see this opera complete and with subtitles on YouTube in a production designed and performed by the Hamburg Opera and Philharmonic. The show is handsomely shot and edited, but has a peculiar feature -- the opera's overture is played over images of a puppet theater foreshadowing key scenes in the show.  The image is pillar-boxed, that is, tall and narrow and the live-action figures move in a strange skittery way -- a bit like insects or marionettes.  I can't tell if the effect is intentional or some kind of artifact of the motion capture.  Mouths move mechanically as if tugged open and shut by strings and the Wolf's Gorge is filled with twitching animated piles of debris, leaf-monsters and writhing fallen limbs -- the characters seem to interact with shadowy animated figures like stop-motion apparitions in a film by Jan Svankmeyer or the Quay Brothers.