Marschner occupies an important position in the history of German Romantic opera after the death of Weber. He began his musical career in Pressburg (the modern Bratislava), teaching in a noble family and serving as director of music in another, before moving to Dresden, where his first opera was staged, working subsequently in Leipzig and finally in Hanover, where he died in 1861.

The best known of Marschner's thirteen operas is Hans Heiling, based on the story of a marriage between an Earth Spirit and a mortal woman and first performed in Berlin in 1833. The opera brought the composer a considerable reputation, although this did not materially affect his position in Hanover, where he was music director of the Court Theatre.

He devoted himself to music from 1815-16, when he met Beethoven and became a private music teacher in Bratislava. From 1821 he worked as a stage composer and conductor in Dresden, then at the Leipzig Stadttheater (swiftly winning fame with Der Vampyr, 1827, and Der Templer und die Jüdin, 1829) and, from 1830, at the Hanover Hoftheater, where his Hans Heiling (1831-2) made his name as a leading German opera composer. Outspoken in his advocacy of a true German opera, he was held in high esteem by Mendelssohn and Schumann, and later by Bülow, Hanslick, Spitta and Pfitzner, for his 13 operas, which in content and form represent a link between Weber and Wagner, making him one of the central figures of the Romantic era. They are characterized by a consistent integration of all theatrical means. From creating a protagonist psychologically divided within himself (Der Vampyr), he evolved a drama less dependent on local setting or comic and folk elements than Weber's operas but more melodramatic, stressing explicit musical characterization, motivic development, leitmotif technique and ultimately, in Hiarne (1857-8), through-composition. Since he often sacrificed music for dramatic ends, most of his work is forgotten, but his masterpiece, Hans Heiling, is the definitive expression of the spirit of his age. He also wrote Singspiels, pageants, incidental music, a ballet, over 400 songs and 120 male-voice choruses, and chamber music.