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More than anything else, Schubert wanted to be the German Rossini. In the end, it would be Wagner, not Schubert, who would reform German opera. Frannie had terrible taste in picking books, and he picked one loser after another. But more importantly, his talent was writing songs, not opera. In writing his operas, he would back himself into musical corners from which he would have extricated himself elegantly in his song writing.

”Fierrabras” was a look at Charlemagne’s sons, something that was better done in the Seventies with “Pippin” on Broadway. The book was written by Joseph Kupelweiser, brother of the theater owner, which is how it got Schubert’s attention. Like Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” it’s a singspiel, a play with spoken dialog interspersed with songs. In other words, it’s like an American musical. But the dialog is the kind of material that Gilbert & Sullivan made fun of.

What went wrong was that Kupelweiser and Schubert thought that they were writing a historical dramatic opera. In fact they were writing a high adventure comedy like “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but they didn’t know it. To successfully stage the opera today, one would need to hire the “Raiders” team of Katz and Huyck to rewrite the spoken dialog.

The opera received its first full staging in Philadelphia in 1978 at the Walnut Street Theater, the oldest operating theater in America. But normal people couldn’t get tickets because every college music professor in the world had beaten a path to the ticket office first.

It’s a frustrating experience. The overture is in his mature style. But as soon as the opening chorus begins, Schubert reverts to his juvenile style and only strays from it a few times. One is a blood-and-thunder mezzo soprano aria that borders on plagiarizing Mozart, and a chorus that borders on plagiarizing Beethoven. The basic format is chorus, some action, trot the chorus on stage to comment on the action, rinse and repeat.

The overture begins with tremelo string figures that presage his final string quartet. The horns pick up the tune of the chorus that sounds like Beethoven. Introduction complete, the first subject sounds a bit like Weber. The second subject is more like Schubert. This time there is a brief development section. The recap is in the expected keys. The coda is based on the first subject.

Schubert: Overture to “Fierrabras,” D. 796/1