Giacomo Meyerbeer

Considered the most famous opera composer of the 19th century, Meyerbeer is by contrast much less performed today, and his works are known only to insiders. Born on September 5, 1791 in Tasdorf, near Berlin (then in Prussia), Jakob Liebmann Meyer Beer was the son of a sugar merchant and a wealthy Jewish heiress, whose father made his fortune running the kingdom's lottery. The young man studied piano with Franz Lauska, a pupil of Muzio Clementi, who himself came to give lessons to the precociously gifted musician, giving his first concert at the age of ten. He then studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter, Mendelssohn's teacher, and Bernhard Anselm Weber, conductor of the Berlin Royal Opera, where his ballet-pantomime Der Fischer un das Milchmädchen was performed on March 26, 1810. He completed his training in Darmstadt with Abbé Vogler, whose pupil was also Carl Maria von Weber, with whom the young Meyerbeer became friends. His oratorio Gott un die Natur (1811) and the opera Jephtas Gelübde (1812) were performed in Berlin without much success, as was his singspiel Wirt und Gast, oder Aus Scherz Ernst (1813) in Stuttgart, which he revised for performance in Vienna under the title Die beiden Kalifen. He continued to compose for the pianoforte, and his first recital in Vienna was warmly applauded. At the end of 1814, he decided to leave for Paris, where he spent a year immersed in the cultural scene, doing the same in London, before settling in Italy in 1816, where a performance of Rossini's Tancredi made a strong impression on him. He met the librettist Gaetano Rossi, who wrote the text for his cantata Gli amori di Teolinda, while his operas made him widely known and appreciated: Romilda e Costanza (Padua, 1817), Semiramide riconosciuta (Turin, 1819), Emma di Resburgo (Venice, 1819), which toured Europe in German, and Margherita d'Angiù (Milan, 1820), also translated into French. After L'esule di Granata (Milan, 1822), he became Rossini's equal with Il crociato in Egitto (Venice, 1824), revived in London and Paris, where Prussian King Frederick William III came to congratulate him in person. With so much success, he had no difficulty in Italianizing his first name to Giacomo and setting out to conquer Paris, with the French version Margherita d'Anjou (March 1826). After marrying his cousin Minna Mosson in Berlin in May 1826, Meyerbeer enlisted the collaboration of France's most famous librettist, Eugène Scribe, with whom he worked for four years alongside Germain Delavigne on Robert le Diable, a five-act "grand opéra" adapted from a medieval legend, premiered at the Paris Opéra, Salle Le Peletier, on November 21, 1831. With its star-studded line-up of sopranos Julie Dorus-Gras and Laure Cinti-Damoreau, tenor Adolphe Nourrit and bass Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur, the work received one of the greatest ovations of all time, and set the tone for its competitors, who were inspired by this style of great dramatic effect. Played 754 times in Paris up to 1893, it was staged almost every year and revived in Europe's greatest theaters. Elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, Meyerbeer took time off to work with Scribe on his new project, Les Huguenots, presented on February 29, 1836. It's hard to believe that it would be a bigger success than its predecessor, but it was, with the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 as its subject and the love duet "Tu l'as dit, oui tu m'aimes" as its climax. In many respects, such as the use of leitmotivs, the musical consideration of stage movement, the melodic arc encompassing aria and recitative, and certain orchestral effects, Meyerbeer proved to be an innovator, and many of his ideas were to be repeated. Played 1,126 times over the course of a century in Paris, Meyerbeer's greatest success was surpassed only by Gounod's Faust. While he was working on his next subject, completed in 1841, the composer joined his wife, who, unable to bear Parisian life, had moved to Berlin with their children. He was also in conflict with the new director of the Paris Opera, Léon Pillet. Meyerbeer waited for Pillet's resignation before presenting his work. Appointed Music Director of the Royal Prussian Opera in 1842, he returned to the German language for Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (1844), with Jenny Lind, and conducted operas by Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Spohr, Weber, Bellini and Wagner. Fed up with the intendant's intrigues, he finally resigned his post in 1846 and left for Vienna, where Ein Feldlager was revived as Vielka. Back at the Paris Opéra with a new director, he hired Pauline Viardot, Gustave-Hippolyte Roger and the faithful Levasseur to present Le Prophète, based on Voltaire'sEssai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, on April 16, 1849. This new blockbuster, attended by Chopin, Berlioz, Verdi, Delacroix, Tourgueniev and Théophile Gautier, proved to be a lucrative triumph for its author, played 573 times until 1912 and revived worldwide. Here again, the composer's treatment of the subject and the musical arrangements were imaginative, with no less than four choruses, an organ and a fanfare of eighteen saxhorns. Appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor, he received several other distinctions in Prussia, Austria and the Kingdom of Bavaria. He continued to reside in Berlin, where he conducted royal court concerts. He composed a number of works for special occasions, including marches, cantatas, odes and Psalm XCI for the cathedral choir. In Paris, he premiered L'Étoile du Nord (February 16, 1854), and followed its revival across Europe, followed by Le Pardon de Ploërmel with librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, which took him five years to complete before its premiere on April 4, 1859. In between, he spent four months in Italy, where he attended several of Verdi's operas in 1856. In order not to offend Scribe, he returned to a project abandoned in 1841, L'Africaine, which he reworked and renamed Vasco de Gama. Inspired by Camoëns' Lusiades, the work recounts the explorer's adventures as far as India, where he meets Queen Sélika. Despite Scribe's death on February 20, 1861, he pursued the composition, completing it in November 1863. He attended the first rehearsals when his health failed. On May 2, 1864, Meyerbeer died at the age of 72. The opera, revised by musicographer François-Joseph Fétis, who transposed the action to Madagascar, was finally premiered posthumously under the original title L'Africaine, on April 28, 1865, in the presence of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. It was another triumph for the king of French opera.

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