From the earliest years of his creative activity Weber had been composing operas. And they grew steadily better. The one just preceding _Freischütz_ was _Abu Hassan_, a comic opera in one act telling the difficulties of Hassan and his wife Fatima to escape their debts. The dainty and bustling music has helped to keep the piece alive. But the piece which Weber intended should be his _magnum opus_ was _Euryanthe_, which followed _Freischütz_. The critics, differing with the public in their opinion concerning the latter work, admitted Weber’s power of writing in simple style, but asserted that he could not master longer concerted forms. Weber accepted the challenge and wrote _Euryanthe_ as a work of pure romanticism, separated from the national element, conceived on the broadest musical scale. It is a true opera, without spoken dialogue. The music is in parts the finest Weber ever wrote, and in more than one way suggests _Lohengrin_, which seems to have germinated in Wagner’s mind in part from the study of _Euryanthe_. Weber’s last opera, written on commission from Covent Garden, London, and completed only a few months before his death, was ‘Oberon,’ a return to the singspiel type, with much of the other-worldly in its story. _Euryanthe_ had failed of popular success, chiefly through its impossibly crude and involved libretto. ‘Oberon’ was better, but far from ideal. It has, like ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Oberon, Titania, Puck, and the host of fairies, together with mortal lovers whose destinies become involved with those of the elves. The music is often charming, revealing a delicacy of imagination not found in _Freischütz_, but it is lacking in characterizing power, and reveals its composer’s lessening bodily and mental vigor. Weber had established German opera on a par with Italian, and there stood men ready to take up his mantle. Chief of these was Heinrich Marschner.[100] He is best known by his opera _Hans Heiling_, which tells the adventurer of the king of the elves who takes human form as the schoolmaster, Hans Heiling, in order to win a mortal maiden. The music is full of romantic imagination and is generally supposed to have influenced Wagner in the writing of ‘The Flying Dutchman.’ Marschner’s other important operas are _Templer und Jüdin_, founded upon ‘Ivanhoe,’ and ‘The Vampire.’