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Meyerbeer was German-Jewish, born Jacob Liebmann Beer (1791) near Berlin. Both his parents came from wealthy backgrounds and two of his brothers became well-known astronomers and poets. Like Mozart, his precocious talent led to an early musical debut, performing at the age of 9, he studied with the Abbé Vogler, who also taught Carl Maria von Weber. Moving from virtuosic performance to composition and for family reasons taking the name Meyerbeer, he went to Italy, where he came under Rossini’s influence and renamed himself Giacomo. Of his 17 operas (1812-1865), the best-known are probably Les Huguenots and L’Africaine, while his first major success Il Crociatto in Egitto was the last opera to feature a castrato.


Meyerbeer’s first big hit, Robert le Diable is often (and inaccurately) considered the first “grand opera,” but his melodramatic, historical plots, sumptuous scores, huge casts, and staging demands ensured the success of his operas, until the sustained personal attacks of Wagner (whose 1842 opera Rienzi was maliciously dubbed “Meyerbeer’s greatest work”!) and growing anti-Semitism in Germany, and changes in taste elsewhere, reduced his popularity. Only recently have his operas been restaged, with varying success.