"The "new German opera" of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was intended both to reflect the "Germany of the imagination" and to help actualize the vision of a new nation. The search for a new German opera by critics and composers alike was therefore not merely an aesthetic movement, but also a political and social critique. Stephen C. Meyer examines Weber's operas Der Freischutz and Euryanthe, as well as Etienne Mehul's Joseph and Peter von Winter's Das unterbrochene Opferfest, in light of aesthetic and nationalistic writings of contemporaneous German critics. The volume includes a detailed analysis of the Wolf's Glen scene from Der Freischutz and numerous, previously unavailable English translations of German primary sources."--BOOK JACKET.