MEYERBEER, GIACOMO (1791-1864), German corn poser, first known as Jakob Meyer Beer, was born at Berlin Sept. 6, 1791' His father, Herz Beer, was a banker; his mother, Amalie (née Wulf), was a woman of high intellectual culture; and two of his brothers distinguished themselves in astronomy and literature. He studied the pianoforte, first under Lauska, and afterwards under Lauska's master, Clementi. When seven years old he played Mozart's Concerto in D Minor in public, and at nine he was pronounced the best pianist in Berlin. For compo sition he was placed under Zelter, and then under Bernard Weber, director of the Berlin opera, by whom he was introduced to the Abbe Vogler. Vogler received him into his house at Darmstadt, where he formed an intimate friendship with Weber. In 1812 the grand duke appointed Meyerbeer court composer. His first opera, Jeptha's GeliThde, failed lamentably at Darmstadt in 1811 and his second, Wirth and Gast (Alimelek), at Vienna in 1814. Bitter disappointment over these failures drove him to Italy.
At Venice he was captivated by Rossini, and produced a success sion of seven Italian operas—Romilda e Costanza, Semiramide riconosciuta, Eduardo e Cristina, Emma di Resburgo, Margherita d'Anjou, L'Esule di Granata and Il Crociato in Egitto—which all achieved a success as brilliant as it was unexpected. Against this act of treason to German art Weber protested, and an invitation to Paris in 1826 led him to review his position dispassionately. For several years he produced nothing in public ; but, in concert with Scribe, he planned his first French opera, Robert le Diable (Grand Opera, 1831). It was the first grand romantic opera, with situations more theatrically effective than any that had been attempted either by Cherubini or Rossini, and with ballet music such as had never yet been heard, even in Paris.
His next opera, Les Huguenots, was first performed in 1836. In gorgeous colouring, rhetorical force, consistency of dramatic treatment, and careful accentuation of individual types, it is at least the equal of Robert le Diable. Meyerbeer then spent many years in the preparation of his next greatest works—L'Africaine and Le Prophete. The libretti of both these operas were fur nished by Scribe; and both were subjected to countless changes.
Meanwhile Meyerbeer accepted the appointment of kapell meister to the king of Prussia, and spent some years at Berlin, where he produced Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, a German opera, in which Jenny Lind made her first appearance in Prussia. Here also he composed, in 1846, the overture to his brother Michael's drama, Struensee. But his chief care at this period was bestowed upon the worthy presentation of the works of others : Weber's Euryanthe, and Rienzi and Der fliegende Holldnder, the first two operas of Richard Wagner, who, then in poverty and exile, would, but for him, have found it impossible to obtain a hearing in Berlin. With Jenny Lind as prima donna and Meyerbeer as con ductor, the opera flourished brilliantly in the Prussian capital.
See lives and studies by J. Weber (1898), J. Dauriac (1913), Her mann Abert (1918) and Julius Kapp (1920.