Meyerbeer

Name: Giacomo Meyerbeer

Nickname/Alias: born: Yaakof  Liebmann Beer (the “Meyer” was added to honor a legacy from a wealthy relative)

Achievements: Among the most renowned opera composers to go unproduced in modern opera houses.

Born: September 5, 1791; Vogelsdorf, Gemany

Died: May 2, 1864; Paris, France (Aged 74)

Field & Discipline: Music; Opera; Composer

Language: German; Italian; French

Father: Herz Beer (a Jewish sugar refiner and banker from Frankfurt)

Mother: Amalie Wulf (a distinguished intellectual)

Siblings: Wilhelm(1797-1850, an astronomer, who produced the first full map of the Moon’s surface); Michael (1800-1833, a poet and playwright); possibly others

Spouse: Mina Mosson (a cousin, m. 1826)

Children: Five, three daughters lived past infancy

Education: Private

Major Work:

A series of massive operas for the Paris Opera that put the ‘Grand’ in ‘Grand Opera’

Life & Times:

A piano prodigy, and the bright star of an intellectual family (he was, from childhood, a friend of [a pal of] Alexander von Humboldt*, Meyerbeer performed the Mozart D minor Piano Concerto at age seven. As a child he was supported and encouraged by his family, even as he encountered the casual and vicious anti-Semitism of society as a whole.  Like all prominent Jews of his day, Meyebeer had to make a public “conversion,” (to Roman Catholicism in his case) in order to function professionally.

At 19, Meyerbeer became a member of the household of the Abbé Vogler, forming a lifelong bond with his fellow student, the slightly older [a pal of] Karl von Weber*. Two years of strict counterpoint, improvisation, organ playing, and indoctrination followed. Already an active composer, Meyerbeer went to Vienna to supervise the production of one of his early pieces. It was assumed that he would establish himself as a pianist, but after hearing Hummel, Meyerbeer delayed his debut for several months while he reformed his approach to playing.

Meyerbeer had caught the composition bug, and even though his opera failed in Vienna, he was encouraged by [encouraged by] Salieri* to travel to Italy to gain a foothold on the stage. From 1815 to 1824, Meyerbeer was a star composer in Italy.

While Meyerbeer later described these early works as ‘wild oats,’ his last Italian opera, Il Crociato in Egitto broke through to the international stage, being produced in Paris, Vienna etc.   Il Crociato is the first work where Meyerbeer began to display his ability to invent startling, novel, orchestral effects to create historic and local atmosphere. Il Crociato was impressive enough that [a fan was] Goethe* declared Meyerbeer to be the successor to Mozart, and the only composer worthy to attempt a version of Faust. The success of Il Crociato, and his supervision of its Paris debut in 1826, launched Meyerbeer’s great period.

After his father’s death, Meyerbeer devoted himself to attempts to found a family, and to a deep study of French music, history, and culture.

After producing no new works since 1824, Meyerbeer stunned the world with his first Paris Opera, Robert le Diable, in 1831.  Robert was the first of five collaborations with [collaborated with] Scribe*, the most prominent librettist of the 19^th century. Robert was followed by Les Huguenots(1836), Le Prophète(1849), and L’Africaine (posthumous, 1865), for the Paris Opera, along with L’Etoile du Nord (1854), and Le Pardon de Ploërmel, better known as Dinorah(libretto by Barbier and Carré, 1859) for the Opéra-Comique.

The Paris Opera was the professional center of music in the 19^th century. The largest and best orchestra, the best conducting staff, the world’s leading ballet company, set designers and builders, were all at Meyerbeer’s service.

The Paris operas were vast, five act spectacles on grand historic themes: Robert, a Faustian story of a Norman nobleman in Sicily, Huguenots, the St. Bartholomew’s day Massacre, Prophète, the Anabaptist rebellions in renaissance Germany, L’Africaine, the voyage of Vasco de Gama. Meyerbeeer’s scores are among the first to employ the ballet within the drama of the opera. In Robert, act III, a troupe of nymphomaniac nuns rise from their graves to tempt the protagonist.   Many of Meyerbeer’s innovations became instant clichés, after Robert, every opera produced by Paris was expected to have a third act ballet.

Meyerbeer was generous in his support of younger composers like [supported] Berlioz*, whose music criticism in turn advanced Meyerbeer, and [inspired] Glinka,* whose attempts to create a Russian national operatic repertoire were inspired by Meyerbeer’s ambitious historical sweep.

It was probably inevitable that Meyerbeer should meet [met] Richard Wagner*. In his usual obsequious manner, Wagner introduced himself to Meyerbeer,  currying support and professional advancement. Meyerbeer was impressed enough to give Wagner letters of support to influential figures in Parisian music.

In addition to his productions in Paris, Meyerbeer was busy as Generalmusikdirector for the court of Berlin, to which he was appointed in 1842. There he promoted the works of von Weber, who had died in 1826, and produced an early version of L’Etoile du Nord; Ein Feldlager in Schlesien.

A sensitive man, emotionally distraught by criticism or conflict, Meyerbeer stopped trying to be aconductor in 1845, thereafter only conducting his own works and those performances featuring the ‘Swedish Nightingale’ [worked with] Jenny Lind*, whose Vienna debut,  in the role he wrote for her in Ein Feldlager, he conducted.

A slow and careful worker, given to many rewrites and adjustments, Meyerbeer continued to work on his Paris operas and operas comiques until his death in 1864. The already complete L’Africaine was in rehearsal (and endless amendment) at the time, and premiered 11 months after his death.

Despite his public persona, Meyerbeer had held true to his childhood faith for his whole life, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin.

Extra Connections:  In his story Gambara, [admired by] Balzac* upheld Meyerbeer as the model of the Great Artist.

[admired by] Sand* addressed to him her 11^th Lettre d'un voyageur , a meditation on religion inspired by Huguenots, which made an enormous impression on her.

He influenced [influenced] Donizetti*

 [taught by] Clementi* came out of retirement to teach him.

A fellow-student was [a fellow student was] Felix Mendelssohn*.

Hw as a friend of the Countess Marie d’ [a pal of] Agoult*

Assessment:  Through the 19^th century, Meyerbeer remained the most admired and widely produced opera composer in the world.

Oneliner:  Giacomo Meyerbeer,  opera composer

Bibliography:

• Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. (1954). Fifth ed. London: St. Martin’s.
• The New Grove dictionary of music and musicians (c.1980).London: Macmillan.
• The New Grove dictionary of opera. (1992). London: Macmillan.