About the work
Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn is a comic opera in two acts that the fifteen-year-old Carl Maria von Weber composed in 1801/02 to a now-lost libretto by Joseph Türk, based on a novel by Carl Gottlob Cramer. It premiered in Augsburg in 1803.
Plot
The wealthy, distrustful merchant Peter Schmoll lives with his daughter Minette, who falls in love with the young Karl. Only late in the story is it revealed that Karl is the son of Schmoll's brother, long lost amid the turmoil of the French Revolution, allowing the two families to be reconciled and the young couple to marry.
Cultural significance
It is the earliest Weber opera whose music survives complete, although the libretto is lost; Weber later dedicated the overture, revised in 1807, to Jérôme Bonaparte, and it has remained in the concert repertoire as a stand-alone piece ever since.