47 Facts About Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer was born on Jakob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864 and was a German opera composer of Jewish birth, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner".

Giacomo Meyerbeer's operas made him the most frequently performed composer at the world's leading opera houses in the nineteenth century.

Giacomo Meyerbeer was an early supporter of Richard Wagner, enabling the first production of the latter's opera Rienzi.

Giacomo Meyerbeer was commissioned to write the patriotic opera Ein Feldlager in Schlesien to celebrate the reopening of the Berlin Royal Opera House in 1844, and he wrote music for certain Prussian state occasions.

The critical assaults of Wagner and his supporters, especially after Giacomo Meyerbeer's death, led to a decline in the popularity of his works; his operas were suppressed by the Nazi regime in Germany, and were neglected by opera houses through most of the twentieth century.

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Giacomo Meyerbeer's birthname was Jacob Liebmann Beer; he was born in Tasdorf, near Berlin, then the capital of Prussia, to a Jewish family.

Giacomo Meyerbeer's father was the wealthy financier Judah Herz Beer and his mother, Amalia Wulff, to whom he was particularly devoted, came from the moneyed elite.

Giacomo Meyerbeer was to adopt the surname Meyerbeer on the death of his grandfather Liebmann Meyer Wulff and italianize his first name to Giacomo during his period of study in Italy, around 1817.

Giacomo Meyerbeer was in close contact with Ludwig van Beethoven as he played timpani at the premiere of his Seventh Symphony in December 1813.

Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote during this period numerous piano pieces, including a concerto and set of variations for piano and orchestra, but these have been lost.

Giacomo Meyerbeer arrived in Italy at the beginning of 1816, after visits to Paris and London, where he heard Cramer play.

Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote a series of Italian operas on Rossinian models, including Romilda e Costanza, Semiramide riconosciuta, Emma di Resburgo, Margherita d'Anjou and L'esule di Granata.

All but the last two of these had libretti by Gaetano Rossi, whom Giacomo Meyerbeer continued to support until the latter's death in 1855, although not commissioning any further libretti from him after Il crociato in Egitto.

Name Giacomo Meyerbeer 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, it was the last opera ever written to feature a castrato, and the last to require keyboard accompaniment for recitatives.

Giacomo Meyerbeer rewrote the two major male roles of Bertrand and Robert to suit the talents of Nicolas Levasseur and Adolphe Nourrit, respectively.

Fusion of dramatic music, melodramatic plot, and sumptuous staging in Robert le diable proved a sure-fire formula, as did the partnership with Scribe, which Giacomo Meyerbeer would go on to repeat in Les Huguenots, Le prophete, and L'Africaine.

In Paris Giacomo Meyerbeer had been asked by Louis Veron, the director of the Opera, for a new work.

Together with Scribe, Giacomo Meyerbeer reviewed many subjects before deciding, in 1832, on Les Huguenots.

The contract which Giacomo Meyerbeer signed with Veron contained a penalty clause if the work was not delivered by the end of 1833.

However, in Berlin Giacomo Meyerbeer faced many problems, including the enmity of the jealous Gaspare Spontini, who since 1820 had been Court Kapellmeister and director of the Berlin Hofoper.

Complaints were made in the Berlin press about the delay of the Berlin premiere of Robert le diable, and Giacomo Meyerbeer's music was decried by the critic and poet Ludwig Rellstab.

Meanwhile, in Paris Giacomo Meyerbeer began to seek new libretti, initially considering Le prophete by Scribe, and Le cinq mars by Henri Saint-Georges and eventually settling on Scribe's Vasco da Gama, which he contracted to complete by 1840.

However, Giacomo Meyerbeer had envisaged that the main role in L'Africaine would be written for Falcon; after the catastrophic failure of her voice in 1837, he turned instead to Le prophete.

On 20 August 1839, Giacomo Meyerbeer, whilst relaxing at Boulogne in the company of Moscheles, met for the first time with Richard Wagner, who was en route to Paris.

Giacomo Meyerbeer lodged the score with a Parisian lawyer, and refused to countenance any production until his wishes were met.

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Giacomo Meyerbeer was unique in his time in having the wealth and influence to impose his will as a composer in this way.

Giacomo Meyerbeer wrote a number of works for court occasions, and provided music, at the King's request, for the first staging in Berlin in 1856 of his brother Michael's play Struensee, which had been proscribed under the previous regime.

Giacomo Meyerbeer had hoped to have Jenny Lind sing the lead role of Vielka, but the opera premiered on 7 December 1844 without her.

In 1846 Giacomo Meyerbeer began work on a new project with Scribe and Saint-Georges, Noema, but in the following year Pillet was sacked from the opera and the direction was resumed by Duponchel.

Again Giacomo Meyerbeer's new opera was an outstanding success – despite the unusual feature of the lead female role being the hero's mother, rather than his lover.

Giacomo Meyerbeer composed a few settings of liturgical material, including one of the 91st Psalm ; and choral works for the synagogue at Paris.

Giacomo Meyerbeer was a deeply serious musician and a sensitive personality.

Giacomo Meyerbeer philosophically resigned himself to being a victim of his own success: his extensive diaries and correspondence – which survived the turmoil of 20th-century Europe and have now been published in eight volumes – are an invaluable source for the history of music and theatre in the composer's time.

Giacomo Meyerbeer's personal attachment to Judaism was a mature personal decision – after the death of his maternal grandfather in 1811 he wrote to his mother: 'Please accept from me a promise that I will always live in the religion in which he died'.

Giacomo Meyerbeer genuinely admired Heine's verse, and made a number of settings from it.

Heine, living in Paris from 1830, always equivocal about his loyalties between Judaism and Christianity, and always short of money, asked Giacomo Meyerbeer to intervene with Heine's own family for financial support and frequently took loans and money from Giacomo Meyerbeer himself.

Giacomo Meyerbeer was not above threatening Meyerbeer with blackmail by writing satirical pieces about him.

Giacomo Meyerbeer did not operate on the basis of any theory or philosophy of music and was not an innovator in harmony or musical form.

Giacomo Meyerbeer's contribution was revealed at this stage to be the combination of Italian vocal lines, German orchestration and harmony, and the use of contemporary theatrical techniques, ideas which he carried forward in Robert and his later works.

Giacomo Meyerbeer was always concerned to intensify the theatricality of his operas, even when new ideas emerged at a relatively late stage in the music's composition.

The influence of Giacomo Meyerbeer has been detected in the operas of Antonin Dvorak and other Czech composers, and in the operas of Russian composers including Rimsky-Korsakov and the young Tchaikovsky, who thought Les Huguenots 'one of the greatest works in the repertoire'.

Themes from Giacomo Meyerbeer's works were used by many contemporary composers, often in the form of keyboard paraphrases or fantasies.

Giacomo Meyerbeer transcribed two pieces from L'Africaine, as "Illustrations de l'opera L'Africaine".

Vitriolic campaign of Richard Wagner against Giacomo Meyerbeer was to a great extent responsible for the decline of Giacomo Meyerbeer's popularity after his death in 1864.

Giacomo Meyerbeer supported the young Wagner, both financially and in helping to obtain the premiere productions of both Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman at Dresden.

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In particular, after 1849, Wagner resented Giacomo Meyerbeer's continuing success at a time when his own vision of German opera had little chance of prospering.

Wagner's autobiography Mein Leben, circulated amongst his friends, contains constant sniping at Giacomo Meyerbeer and concludes with Wagner receiving the news of Giacomo Meyerbeer's death, and his companions' gratification at the news.