Die drei Pintos

In 1821, Theodor Hell developed a drama called The Battle for the Bride, with a story taken from the novel Der Brautkampf (1819) by Carl Seidel. Hell gave his friend Weber the text, but Weber disliked the title and changed it to Die drei Pintos ("The Three Pintos"). The title comes from the protagonist, Don Pinto, who is impersonated by two other characters in the course of the opera.

Weber began composing the score and worked at it off and on from then until 1824, but other work including Euryanthe intervened and it remained incomplete at his death in 1826. All that existed, so far, were a number of coded fragments of music: 7 sketches for 17 numbers, and an unknown total of bars scored out of an eventual total of 1700 bars.

Weber's bereaved family made a number of unsuccessful attempts to have Die drei Pintos completed, but eventually his widow Caroline took the draft to Giacomo Meyerbeer, a composer, and friend of Theodor Hell. For some reason, Meyerbeer did nothing and – 26 years later, just before Caroline died – the fragments were returned to her untouched. Her son Max then approached various composers seeking one who would finish the opera, but he was advised to "give up".

After Max's death in 1881, his son Carl (Carl senior's grandson) inherited the composer's musical estate, and vigorously continued the task of trying to find someone to complete the opera. He eventually encountered the 26-year-old Gustav Mahler, who was working as second conductor at the Stadttheater Leipzig for the 1886/87 season. Mahler was keen to help, and became a regular visitor at the Webers' residence (ostensibly to deal with operatic matters though he was also enamoured of Carl's wife Marion; Carl tried to ignore that situation as best he could).

In the spring of 1887, Mahler cracked C. M. von Weber's code, unscrambled the drafts and wrote instrumentions for the existing fragments in accordance with Weber's wishes. A further 13 musical numbers were needed in addition to the existing 7, and Mahler went ahead and composed this music himself, based on Weber's themes. It was decided that the original format of the opera should be kept: a dialogue with musical numbers. The interlude music between Acts I and II (Pinto's dream) and the two-part finale of Act III were written by Mahler, although still based on Weber's leitmotifs and themes.

Time: Late 17th century

Place: Moorish Spain

Mahler had been an admirer of Weber, and in this way he succeeded in creating a complete opera which was premiered at the Neues Stadttheater, Leipzig, on 20 January 1888, with Mahler conducting. Richard Strauss admired the work, but appears to have changed his opinion after his mentor Hans von Bülow panned it; like Bülow, the influential critic Eduard Hanslick was also critical.

After Mahler's death (1911) Die drei Pintos gradually disappeared from regular production. Although it is rarely produced nowadays, the "Intermezzo", composed entirely by Mahler based on melodies by Weber, hints at the flute calls (echoed by other wind instruments such as the oboe and bassoon) in the slow section of the first movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1.

Performances are rare. There was a production at the John Lewis Theatre in London on 10 April 1962, which claimed to be the first in England,[2] and a concert performance at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1976. The American première, given by the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, took place on 6 June 1979, and in June 1997 a concert performance was given as part of the Vienna Festival. In January 1998, seven fully staged performances in a new production conducted by Geoffrey Moull were given by the Bielefeld Opera in Germany. In February 1998, three performances in English were given in a fully staged production by Opera Omnibus in Haslemere, England. A concert performance of Zychowicz's edition of the opera was conducted by Leon Botstein at the Bard Music Festival in Fall 2002. In October 2003, there were six performances of a new production at the Wexford Festival. In January 2010, the Bronx Opera gave the New York staged the premiere of an English-language version of the work.[3] In March 2011, there were four performances by UCOpera at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London. In 2013 it was performed by Moscow Pokrovsky Chamber Musical Theatre, conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

• Werner Hollweg, Hermann Prey, Lucia Popp et al., Munich Philharmonic conductor Gary Bertini (studio recording, RCA Red Seal, 1976).
• Gunnar Gudbjörnsson, Alessandro Svab, Barbara Zechmeister et al., Wexford Festival Opera Chorus, National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus, conductor Paolo Arrivabeni (live performance, Naxos, 2004).

• Brown, Clive (2002a) [1992]. "Weber, Carl Maria (Friedrich Ernst) von". Grove Music Online (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O004022. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
• Brown, Clive (2002b) [1992]. "Drei Pintos, Die". Grove Music Online (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O004022. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
• Zychowicz, James L. (ed.), Gustav Mahler: Die drei Pintos: Based on Sketches and Original Music of Carl Maria von Weber, (Recent Researches in the Music of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries series, vols. 30 and 31) Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions, 2000. ISBN 978-0895794239
• Warrack, John (1976). Carl Maria Von Weber. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29121-7.

• Die drei Pintos: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project