another ranger, who had been unlucky in the preliminary contest for the post of chief huntsman, and is only too ready to listen to Caspar’s promise of unerring bullets.  Max loves Agathe, the daughter of Kuno, the retiring huntsman, and unless he can secure the vacant post, he has little hope of being able to marry her.  He agrees eagerly to Caspar’s proposal, and promises to meet him at midnight in the haunted Wolf’s Glen, there to go through the ceremony of casting the magic bullets.  Meanwhile Agathe is oppressed by forebodings of coming evil.  The fall of an old picture seems to her a presage of woe, and her lively cousin Aennchen can do little to console her.  The appearance of Max on his way to the Wolf’s Glen, cheers her but little.  He too has been troubled by strange visions, and as the moment of the rendezvous approaches his courage begins to fail.  Nevertheless he betakes himself to the Glen, and there, amidst scenes of the wildest supernatural horror, the bullets are cast in the presence of the terrible Samiel himself.  Six of them are for Max, to be used by him in the approaching contest, while the seventh will be at the disposal of the demon.  In the third act Agathe is discovered preparing for her wedding.  She has dreamed that, in the shape of a dove, she was shot by Max, and she cannot shake off a sense of approaching trouble.  Her melancholy is not dissipated by the discovery that, instead of a bridal crown, a funeral wreath has been prepared for her; however, to console herself, she determines to wear a wreath of sacred roses, which had been given her by the hermit of the forest.  The last scene shows the shooting contest on which the future of Max and Agathe depends.  Max makes six shots in succession, all of which hit the mark.  At last, at the Prince’s command, he fires at a dove which is flying past.  Agathe falls with a shriek, but is protected by her wreath, while Samiel directs the bullet to Caspar’s heart.  At the sight of his associate’s fate Max is stricken with remorse, and tells the story of his unholy compact.  The Prince is about to banish him from his service, when the hermit appears and intercedes for the unfortunate youth.  The Prince is mollified, and it is decided that Max shall have a year’s probation, after which he shall be permitted to take the post of chief huntsman and marry Agathe.

‘Der Freischuetz’ is, upon the whole, the most thoroughly characteristic of Weber’s works.  The famous passage for the horns, with which the overture opens, strikes the note of mystery and romance which echoes through the work.  The overture itself is a notable example of that new beauty which Weber infused into the time-honoured form.  If he was not actually the first—­for Beethoven had already written his ‘Leonore’ overtures—­to make the overture a picture in brief of the incidents of the opera, he developed the idea with so much picturesque power and imagination that the preludes to his operas remain the envy and despair of modern theatrical composers.