On 5 September 1791, Jakob Liebmann Meyer Beer was born near Berlin into one of the wealthiest Jewish families in Prussia. In 1817 he changed his first name to Giacomo during his period of study in Italy and the world would come to know him as Giacomo Meyerbeer. For several decades in the mid-19th century he was quite simply the most popular opera composer in Europe.
His grand operas, among them Robert le diable, Les Huguenots and Le Prophète, dominated the stages of Paris, London and beyond, and shaped the work of composers from Verdi to Wagner. The irony is not lost on history: Wagner, who owed a considerable debt to Meyerbeer’s innovations, later attacked him viciously in his notorious antisemitic essay Das Judenthum in der Musik.
Meyerbeer’s subsequent fall from favour owes much to that campaign. His music largely disappeared from concert programmes for over a century. His rehabilitation is long overdue, and his story sits squarely within LBI London’s work on the contribution of German Jews to European cultural life.
The LBI London library collection, now at Senate House Library in Bloomsbury, includes The Music of the Jews: An Historical Appreciation by Aron Marko Rothmüller, which traces the broader tradition of German-Jewish musical life in which Meyerbeer played such a central role.
Find out more: https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/library
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