Background
Giacomo Meyerbeer was born on September 5, 1791, in in Berlin into a cultured Jewish family, he studied piano with Muzio Clementi and was quickly recognized as a prodigy on that instrument.
(Hermann Max and his Rheinische Kantorei present an entire...)
Hermann Max and his Rheinische Kantorei present an entirely new facet in the oeuvre of the opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer on this recording premiere of his sacred chroal works. In the booklet, Max himself writes, ""The protagonists of the Enlightenment influenced Giacomo's social network in letters and conversations during his early years. It was only logical that religious texts were viewed more in literary terms than as faith documents to be taken seriously. The stories from the Bible contradicting the laws of nature were taken more nonchalantly than with absolute seriousness and naive faith. Jesus often was mentioned no longer as the Son of God but as the most important human being ever born. As a principle operating against prejudices and intolerance, reason questioned everything religious and offered guidance contributing to the proper recognition of the laws of nature. For Meyerbeer, the fascination of religious texts lay in their musical setting as historical and literary material. Romanticists experienced ""time travel"" to regions located in the distant past as a departure from reality and the exploration of an imaginary world created by the mind. Giacomo enjoyed all of the above and was enthusiastic about what he learned as a traveler in Europe. His career as a virtuoso, which his great talent as a pianist when he was a boy had seemed to promise, was soon forgotten. Italy fascinated Meyerbeer. Especially Rossini and Salieri. He now kenw that it was right to have abandoned the oppressively dry instruction in composition that he was receiving from Zelter and to study in Darmstadt with Abbe Vogler. The Abbe cured him of self-doubts and opened his imagination to a vast ocean of compositional possibilities.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LX1RXSQ/?tag=2022091-20
(Giacomo Meyerbeer's eminence as an operatic composer was ...)
Giacomo Meyerbeer's eminence as an operatic composer was such that the works he wrote for the Paris Opéra between 1831 and 1865-Robert le Diable, Les Huguenots, L'Africaine and Le Prophète-were among the most spectacular and popular, well into the twentieth century. These overtures and orchestral pieces illustrate the power of Meyerbeer's writing, his sense of drama, his orchestral coloring, and his melodic beauty. L'Etoile du Nord and Dinorah, written for the Opéra Comique, are lighter in tone, but notable for their programmatic inventiveness.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J587KB0/?tag=2022091-20
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1172113823/?tag=2022091-20
(Gli Ugonotti - Opera in Five Acts is an unchanged, high-q...)
Gli Ugonotti - Opera in Five Acts is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1870. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3337294022/?tag=2022091-20
(This is a collection of letters by Meyerbeer, the operati...)
This is a collection of letters by Meyerbeer, the operatic composer who died in 1864. Critics have recently re-evaluated his work, recognizing his musical craftmanship, his dramatic sense and his influence on later operatic composers. His operas - "Il Crociato", "Robert le diable", "Les Huguenots", "Le Prophete" and "L'etoile du nord" - were extremely successful in Paris at the time of his death. However, the fashionable anti-semitism of the late 19th century meant that his reputation faded quickly. Heinz and Gudrun Becker, the editors of Meyerbeer's "Letters and Diaries", have selected representative letters from all periods of his life to provide a well balanced picture of the composer's personality and place in history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0931340195/?tag=2022091-20
Giacomo Meyerbeer was born on September 5, 1791, in in Berlin into a cultured Jewish family, he studied piano with Muzio Clementi and was quickly recognized as a prodigy on that instrument.
Meyerbeer also studied music theory and composition, first with Carl Friedrich Zelter, then with the Berlin opera director Bernard Anselm Weber, and finally with the Abbé Vogler, one of the most eminent German theorists of the time. By his early 20s Meyerbeer was a sensational pianist, but his chief aim was to be a composer.
Drawn from the start to dramatic music, Meyerbeer made a moderately successful public debut in 1811 with the oratorio Gott und die Natur. Following that came two operas, both failures, evidently because of their overly serious, academic vein. Antonio Salieri, director of the Imperial Chapel in Vienna, advised Meyerbeer to go to Italy to see more of the world and learn how to write for the voice. He took this good counsel and studied in Venice (1815-1817).
Meyerbeer's most important model there was Gioacchino Rossini, who epitomized the abilities and qualities that Meyerbeer himself lacked. He was an apt student and by 1817 had become sufficiently Italianized to compose an Italian opera, Romilda e Costanza, which was produced with success that year. This turn of fortune led him to compose three more works for Italian theaters, the best being Il Crociato in Egitto, given in 1824. By then his eyes were already turned toward Paris, where he eventually won his greatest triumphs.
From 1824 to 1831 Meyerbeer wrote nothing for the stage. Part of that time he spent in Berlin on family affairs; otherwise he was absorbed in the observation of French life and culture. His first French opera, Robert le Diable, was produced in Paris in 1831. A brilliant success, it catapulted him into a ruling position in the lyric theater of France.
After Robert, Meyerbeer brought out three more operas on a similar model: Les Huguenots (1836), probably his best work; Le Prophète (1849); and L'Africaine, composed and recomposed over a period of 25 years and produced post-humously in 1865. In collaboration with the popular playwright Eugène Scribe, Meyerbeer created in these pieces a species of opera offering highly melodramatic action organized in a series of vast tableaux culminating in a striking denouement. Extraordinary virtuosity is demanded of the solo singers, but the keynote of the scores is the adroit marshaling of vocal and instrumental forces into large-scale musical developments at climatic points in the action.
Meyerbeer composed L'Étoile du Nord (1854) and Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859) for the Opéra-Comique, plus a few occasional pieces written in Berlin, where for a time he held a royal appointment as general director of music. None of these added much to his reputation, which has largely vanished over the years. There is little taste now for his style of expression, but his historical position is secure as the composer who caught most fully in opera the mood of middle-class society in 19th-century France.
(Giacomo Meyerbeer's eminence as an operatic composer was ...)
(Hermann Max and his Rheinische Kantorei present an entire...)
(opera libretto w/side-by-side original Italian script & E...)
(Gli Ugonotti - Opera in Five Acts is an unchanged, high-q...)
(This is a collection of letters by Meyerbeer, the operati...)
(Opéra comique en 3 actes / Deborah Cook, Christian du Ple...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
In 1826, shortly after the death of the father, Giacomo Meyerbeer was married to his cousin, Minna Mosson (1804–1886). The marriage which may have been "dynastic" in its origins proved to be stable and devoted; the couple were to have five children, of whom the three youngest (all daughters) survived to adulthood.