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Giacomo Meyerbeer
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(b Vogelsdorf, 5 Sept 1791; d Paris, 2 May 1864). German composer. Of a wealthy Jewish merchant family in Berlin, he studied composition with Zelter (1805), B. A. Weber (1808) and Abbé Vogler in Darmstadt (1810-11), winning success more as a pianist than a composer. After a study tour in Italy (1816-25), where he met artists, librettists and impresarios and wrote six notable operas (especially the impressive Il crociato in Egitto, 1824), he gained a reputation equal to Rossini's. From 1825 he worked chiefly in Paris but was always on the move, taking cures, producing his operas in major European cities and auditioning new singers; in 1842, indisputably the world's leading active opera composer, he became Prussian Generalmusikdirektor - he was dismissed in 1848 but directed the Berlin royal court music until his death. Having first conquered the Paris Opéra with the five-act Robert le diable (1831), he and his most important collaborator Eugène Scribe created the famous Les Huguenots (1836), then began work on Le prophète and L′africaine, both of which suffered long delays from casting difficulties; Le prophète was eventually received enthusiastically with Pauline Viardot as Fidès (1849), while the première of L′africaine (1865) became a brilliant posthumous tribute to its composer.
Cultivating a consistently realistic style, ‘expressive monumentalism’, Meyerbeer conceived of grand opera as a whole, blending social content, historical material and local colour; exploitation of the horrific was an essential ingredient, along with massive crowd scenes building up a grandiose volume of sound and long passages of demanding solo singing. But these were allied to innovations, notably in the orchestra and in the deliberate creation of ‘unbeautiful’ sound. He was widely admired for his care over historical details, his melodic invention in ballet scenes and his grasp of the capabilities of individual singers.
works:Operas
- Il crociato in Egitto (1824)
- Robert le diable (1831)
- Les Huguenots (1836)
- Le prophète (1849)
- L′étoile du nord (1854)
- Dinorah (1859)
- L′africaine (1865)
- 9 others
- secular cantatas, hymns
- sacred works
- over 60 songs
- Sym., E♭ (1811)
- 2 concs.
- ov., variations, marches for orch marches for military band
| Biography: Giacomo Meyerbeer |
The four grand operas composed for Paris by the German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) set a style that dominated the French lyric theater and exerted a powerful influence on opera production throughout Europe for a generation afterward.
Giacomo Meyerbeer began life as Jakob Liebmann Beer, later adding Meyer, the name of his maternal grandfather, and changing Jakob to Giacomo on taking up residence in Italy. Born in Berlin into a cultured Jewish family, he studied piano with Muzio Clementi and was quickly recognized as a prodigy on that instrument. He also studied music theory and composition, first with Carl Friedrich Zelter, then with the Berlin opera director Bernard Anselm Weber, and finally with the Abbé Vogler, one of the most eminent German theorists of the time. By his early 20s Meyerbeer was a sensational pianist, but his chief aim was to be a composer.
Drawn from the start to dramatic music, Meyerbeer made a moderately successful public debut in 1811 with the oratorio Gott und die Natur. Following that came two operas, both failures, evidently because of their overly serious, academic vein. Antonio Salieri, director of the Imperial Chapel in Vienna, advised Meyerbeer to go to Italy to see more of the world and learn how to write for the voice. He took this good counsel and studied in Venice (1815-1817).
Meyerbeer's most important model there was Gioacchino Rossini, who epitomized the abilities and qualities that Meyerbeer himself lacked. He was an apt student and by 1817 had become sufficiently Italianized to compose an Italian opera, Romilda e Costanza, which was produced with success that year. This turn of fortune led him to compose three more works for Italian theaters, the best being Il Crociato in Egitto, given in 1824. By then his eyes were already turned toward Paris, where he eventually won his greatest triumphs.
From 1824 to 1831 Meyerbeer wrote nothing for the stage. Part of that time he spent in Berlin on family affairs; otherwise he was absorbed in the observation of French life and culture. His first French opera, Robert le Diable, was produced in Paris in 1831. A brilliant success, it catapulted him into a ruling position in the lyric theater of France.
After Robert, Meyerbeer brought out three more operas on a similar model: Les Huguenots (1836), probably his best work; Le Prophète (1849); and L'Africaine, composed and recomposed over a period of 25 years and produced post-humously in 1865. In collaboration with the popular playwright Eugène Scribe, Meyerbeer created in these pieces a species of opera offering highly melodramatic action organized in a series of vast tableaux culminating in a striking denouement. Extraordinary virtuosity is demanded of the solo singers, but the keynote of the scores is the adroit marshaling of vocal and instrumental forces into large-scale musical developments at climatic points in the action. This is French grand opera in its gaudiest dress - massive, spectacular, and as broad in its appeal as the Cecil B. De Mille film epics.
Meyerbeer composed L'Étoile du Nord (1854) and Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859) for the Opéra-Comique, plus a few occasional pieces written in Berlin, where for a time he held a royal appointment as general director of music. None of these added much to his reputation, which has largely vanished over the years. There is little taste now for his style of expression, but his historical position is secure as the composer who caught most fully in opera the mood of middle-class society in 19th-century France.
Further Reading
Meyerbeer's work and place in history are outlined in Donald J. Grout, A Short History of Opera (1947; 2d ed. 1965). An interesting defense of Meyerbeerian methods is presented in Bernard van Dieren, Down among the Dead Men and Other Essays (1935). For a comprehensive study of Meyerbeer and his collaborators at work in the context of 19th-century romanticism see William L. Crosten, French Grand Opera: An Art and a Business (1948).
| Dictionary of Dance: Giacomo Meyerbeer |
Meyerbeer, Giacomo (b Tasdorf, 5 Sept. 1791, d Paris, 2 May 1864). German composer. He wrote the music for Lauchery's ballet, The Fisher and the Milkmaid (Berlin, 1810). The music for Ashton's Les Patineurs (1937) derives from the ballet divertissements of his operas Le Prophète and Étoile du nord.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Giacomo Meyerbeer |
Meyerbeer, Giacomo (jä'kōmō mī'yərbĕr), 1791-1864, German operatic composer. He traveled in Italy and experimented in various styles of composition, but his real success came only with his spectacular French grand operas-Robert le Diable (1831) and his masterpiece, Les Huguenots (1836). For these and two other grand operas, Le Prophète (1849) and L'Africaine (1865), Scribe was the librettist. Two opéras comiques are noteworthy, L'Étoile du nord (1854) and Dinorah (1859). He calculated the taste of his public with tremendous success and was much imitated, notably by Wagner in Rienzi.
| Artist: Giacomo Meyerbeer |
- Period: Romantic (1820-1869)
- Country: Germany
- Born: September 05, 1791 in Vogelsdorf, Germany
- Died: May 02, 1864 in Paris, France
- Genres: Choral Music, Miscellaneous Music, Opera, Vocal Music
Biography
Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) was a major figure in French opera in the first half of the nineteenth century. In fact, he had become recognized as Europe's leading active composer of opera by the 1830s and 1840s. He also wrote German and Italian operas with some success, Il crociato in Egitto being a prominent example in the latter vein. Meyerbeer was known to create unusual combinations of sound in brilliant and striking orchestration, and he introduced many innovations in opera. Robert le diable, Les Huguenots and L'africaine are among his finest operas. Meyerbeer was born on September 5, 1791, in Vogelsdorf, near Berlin. He showed talent at an early age, and studied piano with Franz Lauska. His skills developed quickly, and at age eleven he made his concert debut in Berlin. He subsequently studied composition with B.A. Weber.His first work for the stage was the 1809-1810 ballet Der Fischer und das Milchmädchen. Shortly after its premiere, he went to Darmstadt to study with Abbé Vogler, whose students then included, among others, Carl Maria von Weber. After nearly two years of instruction, during which he wrote two operas and numerous other works, Meyerbeer left for Munich, ready to test his skills as a composer and performer. It was there that his second opera (but first surviving), Jephtas Gelübde, was unsuccessfully premiered in December 1812. Other works for the stage would follow, but none with success.
Yet his keyboard career was moving in the opposite direction; he received many accolades and was considered one of the leading virtuosos of the day. In November 1814, Meyerbeer departed Munich for Paris. Two years later he traveled to Rome, and for the next nine years, made Italy his home, turning out a half-dozen operas, including Romilda e Costanze (1817), and Il crociato in Egitto (1824), probably his most successful stage effort of that time. He traveled to Paris in 1825, confident he could conquer Parisian operatic audiences with the same success he had achieved in Italy. His first great success there came with Robert le diable; the 1831 premiere was a sensation, receiving acclaim not only in Paris but throughout Europe in subsequent performances. Five years later he scored another triumph with his opera Les Huguenots. Meyerbeer met the admiring Wagner in 1839, and helped to mount his Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman.
In 1842, Meyerbeer became the Prussian General Music Director in Berlin, also serving as Court composer and director of music at the Court. His opera Les Huguenots premiered in 1842, providing him with yet another success. Owing to a dispute, he stepped down as General Music Director in 1848, but kept his duties at Court. Meyerbeer began to look toward Paris once more and in 1849 his opera Le prophète, a work he had begun in 1836 and finished in 1840, scored another success. In his final years Meyerbeer worked on an opera he had begun in 1837, L'africaine. He finished it only in 1864, but did not live to see its 1865 premiere. He died on May 2, 1864. ~ Robert Cummings, All Music Guide
| Wikipedia: Giacomo Meyerbeer |
Giacomo Meyerbeer (5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a noted German-born opera composer, and the first great exponent of Grand Opera. At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer and producer of opera in Europe, yet is virtually unknown today.
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Biography
Early years
Meyerbeer was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf (now a part of Rüdersdorf), near Berlin 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 first keyboard instructor was Franz Lauska (b. 1764), a pupil of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and a favoured teacher at the Berlin court.[1] Meyerbeer also became one of Muzio Clementi's pupils while Clementi was in Berlin, and old Clementi himself, although he had long given up teaching, was so much struck, during a visit to Berlin, with the promise displayed in the boy's performance as to consent to give Meyerbeer lessons. Meyerbeer made his public debut in 1801 playing Mozart's D Minor Piano Concerto in Berlin. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung reported: 'The amazing keyboard playing of young Bär (a Jewish lad of 9 [sic]), who carried off the difficult passages and other solo parts with aplomb, and has fine powers of rendition even more rarely found in one of his age, made the concert even more interesting'.[2]
Throughout his youth, although he was determined to become a musician, Meyerbeer found it difficult to decide between playing and composition. Certainly other professionals in the decade 1810-1820, including Moscheles, considered him amongst the greatest virtuosi of his period. In his youth Beer (as he then was) studied with Antonio Salieri and the German master and friend of Goethe, Carl Friedrich Zelter. Realizing, however, that a full understanding of Italian opera was essential for his musical development, he went to study in Italy for some years, during which time he adopted the first name Giacomo. The 'Meyer' in his surname he adopted after the death of his great-grandfather. It was during this time that he became acquainted with, and impressed by, the works of his contemporary Gioachino Rossini.
The Grand Operas
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 interested only 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 (Judaism 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.
These attacks on Meyerbeer (which also included a swipe at Felix Mendelssohn) are regarded by Paul Lawrence Rose as a significant milestone in the growth of German anti-Semitism.[3]
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 | Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, Paris | ||
| Les Huguenots | 29 February 1836 | Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, 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 | Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, 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 | Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique, Paris | Posthumous |
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Notes
- ^ Zimmermann, 22
- ^ Zimmerman (1991) 24
- ^ See e.g. Paul Lawrence Rose, Wagner, Race and Revolution, London, 1996 ISBN 057117888x
External links
- Meyerbeer Fan Club site at meyerbeer.com
- Article by David Conway on 'Meyerbeer the Jew' on his site dedicated to Jewish musicians
- Meyerbeer cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library
- Free scores by Giacomo Meyerbeer in the International Music Score Library Project
Bibliography
 |
Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Category:Giacomo Meyerbeer |
- Becker, Heinz and Gudrun (1989). Giacomo Meyerbeer, a Life in Letters. London.
- Zimmermann, Reiner (1998). Giacomo Meyerbeer, eine Biographie nach Dokumenten. Berlin.
- Meyerbeer, Giacomo (1999-2004). The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer. Madison and London.
- Meyerbeer, Giacomo (1960 -). Briefwechsel und Tagebücher. Berlin and New York.
- Kaufman, Tom (Autumn 2003). "Wagner vs. Meyerbeer". Opera Quarterly 19 (No. 4).
- Letellier, Robert: A Meyerbeer Reader: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, 2008
"Meyerbeer, Giacomo". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.- Letellier, Robert. Meyerbeer Studies: A Series of Lectures, Essays,and Articles on the Life and Work of Giacomo Meyerbeer.Rosemont Publishing, New Jersey. 2005
Discography
- [1] A Meyerbeer discography (updated whenever an additional opera by Meyerbeer is issued on CD)
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Mentioned in
- Jakob Liebmann Beer
- Jacques Meyerbeer
- Corelli: In Concert (1998 Music Film)
- Alahor in Granata, opera (Classical Work)
- Réminiscences des Huguenots, "Grande Fantaisie dramatique" for piano (after Meyerbeer; 3 versions), S. 412 (LW A35) (Classical Work)
- Verboten und verbannt (Classical Album)
- I Vespri siciliani, opera (Les vêpres siciliennes) (Classical Work)
- Gli amori di Teolinda, dramatic cantata for soprano, clarinet, chorus & orchestra (Classical Work)
- Robert le diable, grand opera in 5 acts (Classical Work)
- Fantasie & Fuge über den Choral "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam", for organ, S. 259 (LW E1) (Classical Work)
- Dinorah (Le pardon de Ploërmel), comic opera in 3 acts (Classical Work)
- La Mort de Sardanapale, cantata for soprano, male chorus & orchestra, H. 50 (fragment) (Classical Work)
- Opera(s) (Classical Work)
- Work(s) Overview (Classical Work)
