Giacomo Meyerbeer (5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a noted German-born opera composer, and the first great exponent of Grand Opera. At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer and producer of opera in Europe, yet is virtually unknown today.
Meyerbeer was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf (now a part of Rüdersdorf), near Berlin with the name Jacob Liebmann Beer. His father was the enormously wealthy finan...
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Giacomo Meyerbeer (5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a noted German-born opera composer, and the first great exponent of Grand Opera. At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer and producer of opera in Europe, yet is virtually unknown today.
Meyerbeer was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf (now a part of Rüdersdorf), near Berlin with the name Jacob Liebmann Beer. His father was the enormously wealthy financier Jacob Judah Herz Beer (1769-1825) and his much-beloved mother, Amalia Liebmann Meyer Wulff (1767-1854) also came from the wealthy elite. Their other children included the astronomer Wilhelm Beer and the poet Michael Beer.
Meyerbeer's first keyboard instructor was Franz Lauska (b. 1764), a pupil of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and a favoured teacher at the Berlin court. Meyerbeer also became one of Muzio Clementi's pupils while Clementi was in Berlin, and old Clementi himself, although he had long given up teaching, was so much struck,...
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