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by David Conway

Links on this site:--

The Jewish Chronicle advance article
Report and Review of November 18, 2001 Hampstead performance
Meyerbeer Invades the United Kingdom, November 18, 2001 (program and announcements)

First published in Program Notes for "Meyerbeer, Master of Musical Spectacle" at Hampstead Town Hall, November 18, 2001

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) was born Jacob Meyer Beer in a covered wagon in which his mother was travelling from Berlin to Frankfurt, a presentiment of his travelling career. His early operas were written while living in Italyhence his first name; and the years of success in which he wrote his masterpieces 'Robert le Diable', 'Les Huguenots', 'Le Prophète' and 'L'Africaine' were spent based in Paris but commuting between the European capitals. From 1830, for a century, these works were never out of the repertoires of the world's leading opera companies - even in Soviet Russia, where the libretto of 'Les Huguenots' was altered to present the fate of the Decembrist revolutionaries. Throughout the era of Grand Opera, Meyerbeer outshone Wagner, Rossini, even Verdi, at the world box office.

His parents were amongst the wealthiest Jews in Berlin, close to the Prussian Court, and brought up their children in accordance with their status. Giacomo's father, Judah Herz Beer, sponsored an early attempt at a reform Jewish congregation; Giacomo's favourite brother Michael was a talented playwright and poet, and another brother, a keen amateur astronomer, produced the first maps of Mars.

Meyerbeer identified himself as a Jew throughout his life, even commemorating family birthdays according to the Jewish calendar. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of his pledge, given at the age of 20 to his mother on the occasion of the death of his grandfather: "Please accept a promise from me in his name that I will always live in the religion in which he died". Meyerbeer undertook work voluntarily for the Paris Consistoire (the Jewish representative body) collaborating with the Paris chazan Samuel Naumbourg in the latter's compilation of the synagogue liturgy 'Zemiroth Yisrael', from which tonight's two choral pieces are taken.

Meyerbeer's success as a composer can be ascribed not only to his craftsmanship and melodic and colouristic invention, but to an unerring sense, shared by his favoured librettist Eugene Scribe, of giving the public what it wanted. This was coupled with a canny knack for management and publicity. He was undoubtedly and unashamedly a showman.

His religion emerged as a public issue when he became the chosen target of a powerful polemicist, Richard Wagner, whose essay 'Judaism in Music' (1850) decries a supposedly Jewish 'commercial' approach to opera as against Wagner's own vision of Art. The persona] attack on Meyerbeer who gave Wagner his first big break by encouraging the production of the latter's 'Rienzi' in Dresden, who gave him financial aid, and to whom Wagner in his time of need had written more than one fawning letter is vicious. Wagner's ingratitude in this squib seems at least as gross as his anti-Semitism.

Nonetheless Meyerbeer's letters and diaries make it clear that he was never under any illusions that his place in society was maintained in spite of, rather than in indifference to, his origins. Writing to his friend, the poet (and unhappy convert to Christianity) Heine in 1839, he opines "I believe that Jew-hatred is like love in the theatres and novels: no matter how often one encounters it in all shapes and sizes, it never misses its target if effectively wielded...... What can be done? No pomade or bear grease, not even baptism, can grow back the foreskin of which we were robbed on the eighth day of life; those who, on the ninth day, do not bleed to death from this operation shall continue to bleed an entire lifetime, even after death".

In December 1863, he wrote out a personal prayer which, if not specifically Jewish, contains numerous echoes of the sentiments of Jewish liturgy : 'Beseech the eternal God that He keep us on the path of virtue, honour and justice.....ennoble and purify my heart and soul... '. (The same prayer also includes requests to 'Preserve my artistic creativity.......and ennoble my artistic fame', examples of the composer's shrewdness even in dealing with his Creator). At his death the next year he was buried according to orthodox rites in Berlin, after a great funeral procession in Paris and a special train for the coffin. All this, and the crowds of mourners, was reported throughout Europe as was only appropriate for the most successfull and popular opera composer of the nineteenth century.