Giacomo Meyerbeer

Meyerbeer was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf, near Berlin, Germany with the name Jacob Liebmann Beer. His father was the enormously wealthy financier Jacob Judah Herz Beer (1769-1825) and his much-beloved mother, Amalia Liebmann Meyer Wulff (1767-1854) also came from the wealthy elite. Their other children included the astronomer Wilhelm Beer and the poet Michael Beer.

Meyerbeer's name first became known internationally with his opera Il crociato in Egitto (premiered in Venice in 1824, and produced in London and Paris in 1825; incidentally the last opera ever to feature a castrato), but he became virtually a superstar with Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil, with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Casimir Delavigne), produced in Paris in 1831 and regarded by some as the first grand opera, although this honor rightly belongs to Auber's La muette de Portici. The fusion of dramatic music, melodramatic plot and sumptuous staging proved a sure-fire formula which Meyerbeer repeated in Les Huguenots (1836), Le prophète (1849), and L'Africaine, (produced posthumously, 1865). All of these operas held the international stage throughout the 19th century, as did the more pastoral Dinorah (1859). However, because they were expensive to stage, requiring large casts of leading singers, and subject to consistent attack from the prevalent Wagnerian schools, they gradually fell into desuetude.

Meyerbeer left Paris for Berlin in 1842 to take the post of Court musical director, but returned to Paris in 1849.

Meyerbeer's immense wealth (increased by the success of his operas) and his continuing adherence to his Jewish religion set him apart somewhat from many of his musical contemporaries. They also gave rise to malicious rumours that his success was due to his bribing musical critics. Richard Wagner (see below) accused him of being only interested in money, not music. Meyerbeer was, however, a deeply serious musician and a sensitive personality. He philosophically resigned himself to being a victim of his own success.

Meyerbeer was interred in the Berlin Jewish cemetery in Schönhauser Allee, amongst other members of the Beer family.

Meyerbeer's extensive diaries and correspondence miraculously survived the turmoil of 20th century Europe and are now being published (6 volumes so far out of 7 - the diaries alone have been published in an English translation in 4 volumes). They are an invaluable source for the history of music and the theatre in the composer's time.

Meyerbeer and Richard Wagner

The vitriolic campaign of Richard Wagner against Meyerbeer was to a great extent responsible for the decline of Meyerbeer's popularity after his death in 1864. This campaign was as much a matter of personal spite as of racism - Wagner had learnt a great deal from Meyerbeer and indeed Wagner's early opera Rienzi (1842) has, facetiously, been called 'Meyerbeer's most successful work'. Meyerbeer supported the young Wagner, both financially and in obtaining a production of Rienzi at Dresden.

However, Wagner resented Meyerbeer's continuing success at a time when his own vision of German opera had little chance of prospering. After the May Uprising in Dresden of 1849, Wagner was for some years a political refugee facing a prison sentence or worse in Saxony. During this period when he was gestating his Ring cycle he had few sources of income apart from journalism and benefactors, and little opportunity of getting his own works performed. The success of Le Prophète sent Wagner over the edge, and he was also deeply envious of Meyerbeer's wealth. After Meyerbeer's death Wagner reissued his 1850 essay Das Judenthum in der Musik (Jewry in Music), in 1868, in an extended form, with a far more explicit attack on Meyerbeer. This version was under Wagner's own name - for the first version he had sheltered behind a pseudonym - and as Wagner had by now a far greater reputation, his views obtained far wider publicity.

Modern productions of Meyerbeer

Meyerbeer's compositions were banned by the Nazi regime because the composer was Jewish, and this was a major factor in their disappearance from the repertory. However, the operas are now beginning to be regularly revived and recorded, although (despite the efforts of such champions as Dame Joan Sutherland, who took part in performances of, and recorded, Les Huguenots) they have yet to achieve anything like the huge popular following they attracted during their creator's lifetime.

Amongst reasons often adduced for the dearth of modern productions are the scale of Meyerbeer's more ambitious works and the cost of mounting them, as well as the alleged lack of virtuoso singers capable of doing justice to Meyerbeer's demanding music. However, recent successful productions of some of the major operas at relatively small centres such as Strasbourg (L'Africaine, 2004) and Metz (Les Huguenots, 2004) show that this conventional wisdom is not unchallengeable.

List of operas

Title	First performance	Location	Notes
Jephtas Gelübde	1812-12-23	Munich
Wirt und Gast	6 January 1813	Stuttgart
Das Brandenburger Tor	1814	Berlin
Romilda e Costanza	19 July 1817	Padua
Semiramide riconosciuta	March 1819	Teatro Regio, Turin
Emma di Resburgo	26 June 1819	Venice, San Benedetto
Margherita d?Anjou	14 November 1820	Milan
L'Almanzore			Probably composed 1820-21 intended for Rome but unperformed there. While it is believed to have been unfinished it is also possible that it is an earlier version of L'esule di Granata
L'esule di Granata	12 March 1822	Milan
Il crociato in Egitto	7 March 1824	La Fenice, Venice	Frequently revised by Meyerbeer
Robert le diable	21 November 1831	Opéra, Paris
Les Huguenots	29 February 1836	Opéra, Paris	Sometimes staged during the 19th century under other titles e.g. "The Guelfs and the Ghibellines" or "The Anglicans and the Puritans" (see WP article on the opera)
Ein Feldlager in Schlesien	7 December 1844	Hofoper, Berlin	Revised as Vielka, Vienna, 1847-02-18
Le prophète	16 April 1849	Opéra, Paris
L'étoile du nord	16 February 1854	Opéra-Comique, Paris	Partly based on the earlier Feldlager in Schlesien, revised in Italian, London, Covent Garden, 19 July 1855
Dinorah ou Le pardon de Ploërmel	4 April 1859	Opéra-Comique, Paris	Revised in Italian as Dinorah, Covent Garden, London, 26 July, 1859
L'Africaine	28 April 1865	Opéra, Paris	Posthumous