his life became steady and illumined with serious purpose. He brought to the theatre a rigor of discipline which it had not known before, and produced a brilliant series of German operas. Early in 1817 he accepted a position as kapellmeister of the German (as opposed to the Italian) opera of Dresden. It was a challenge to his best powers, for the German opera of Dresden was practically non-existent. For a century Italian opera had held undisputed sway, with French a respected second. The light German _singspiele_, the chief representative of German opera, were performed by second-rate artists. All the prestige and influence of the city was for the Italian and French. For the court of Dresden, like that of Berlin half a century before, was thoroughly Frenchified. The king of Saxony owed his kingdom to Napoleon and aristocratic Germans still regarded what was German as mean and common. But there was a more significant reason for Weber’s peculiar position, a reason that gave the color to his future importance. What was patriotic was, as we have seen, in the eyes of the court liberal and dangerous. To foster German opera was accordingly to run the risk of fostering anti-monarchical sentiments. If, just at this time, the court of Dresden chose to inaugurate a separate German opera, it was as a less harmful concession to the demands of the populace, and more particularly as a sort of anti-Austrian move which crystallized just at this time in opposition to Metternich’s reactionism. But, though the court wished a German opera, it felt no particular sympathy for it. In the preliminary negotiations it tried to insist, until met with Weber’s firm attitude, that its German kapellmeister should occupy a lower rank than Morlacchi, the Italian director. And, as Weber’s fame as a German nationalist composer grew, the court of Dresden was one of the last to recognize it. In the face of such lukewarmness Weber established the prestige of the German opera, and wrote _Der Freischütz_, around which all German nationalist sentiment centred. But to understand why _Freischütz_ occupied this peculiar position we must once more turn back to history.