1826, two months after Oberon was produced, before he had time to carry out his intention.
There the matter stood. Weber had composed what I, at any rate, consider his finest opera in a form which made it simply unpresentable under any but the original conditions. It is therefore no subject for wonder that since that day it has seldom, if ever, been performed as written. Huon's first air proving unsuitable to the voice of Braham, the tenor who created the rôle, Weber wrote a new air. In the early German performances the original song was restored, and it was not long before music was provided for the dialogue. Berlioz heard Schroeder-Devrient sing Rezia in Paris four years after the London production. The Théâtre-Lyrique, under the direction of Carvalho, mounted the work in 1857. In 1860, Sir Julius Benedict arranged an Italian version of Oberon for London, adding certain numbers from Euryanthe and providing music for the spoken dialogue. Willner, Josef Schlaar, and Gustav Mahler are others who have made new versions of the work for practical operatic production. Mahler's arrangement was heard at Cologne and when he was in New York he vainly urged Heinrich Conried to produce it at the Metropolitan. Up to the year 1918, however, no version had been regarded as definitive, unless it might have been that of Sir Julius Bene-
