Giacomo Meyerbeer (자코모 마이어베어)

Giacomo Meyerbeer, engraving from a photograph by Pierre Petit

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Painting: Portrait of Meyer Beer (Jacob Liebmann Beer). aged 11 (1803) by Friedrich Georg Weitsch

 

Mov.I: Allegro moderato 00:00
Mov.II: Adagio - Andante 08:51
Mov.III: Rondo: Allegro scherzando 14:54

 

Giacomo Meyerbeer (자코모 마이어베어)  (born Jacob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer of Jewish birth who has been described as perhaps the most successful stage composer of the nineteenth century.^[1] With his 1831 opera Robert le diable and

its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera 'decisive character'.^[2] Meyerbeer's grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition. These were employed in the context of sensational and melodramatic libretti created by Eugène Scribe and were enhanced by the up-to-date theatre technology of the Paris Opéra. They set a standard which helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth century.

 

프랑스식 낭만주의적 취향을 겨냥한 오페라로 파리에서 대단한 인기를 누린 작곡가이다.
베를린과 다름슈타트에서 작곡을 공부했다. 초기 독일 오페라들은 흥행에 모두 실패했고, 살리에리의 권유로 1816년에 이탈리아에 정착해 로시니 양식의 오페라 5곡을 제작했다. 프랑스 오페라는 호화롭게 제작하여 중세적 정신과 초자연성, 공포 등에 대한 당시의 낭만적 취미에 호소했다. 덕분에 이 작품들은 즉각적인 성공을 거두어, 화려하고 규모가 큰 프랑스 그랑 오페라의 모델이 되었다. 살아있을 당시에는 대단한 인기를 누렸지만, 명성이 오래 지속되지는 못했다. 그러나 극적인 성악 구성양식, 관현악법에 대한 천부적인 감각, 특히 베이스 클라리넷·색소폰·바순의 새로운 사용은 훗날 오페라의 발전에 큰 영향을 끼쳤다. 

<출처:마이어베어 [Giacomo Meyerbeer]-다음백과>

 

 

Born to a very wealthy Berlin family, Meyerbeer began his musical career as a pianist but soon decided to devote himself to opera, spending several years in Italy studying and composing. His 1824 opera Il crociato in Egitto was the first to bring him Europe-wide reputation, but it was Robert le diable (1831) which raised his status to great celebrity. His public career, lasting from then until his death, during which he remained a dominating figure in the world of opera, was summarized by his contemporary Hector Berlioz, who claimed that he 'has not only the luck to be talented, but the talent to be lucky.'^[3] He was at his peak with his operas Les Huguenots (1836) and Le prophète (1849);

====================his last opera (L'Africaine) was performed posthumously. His operas made him the most frequently performed composer at the world's leading opera houses in the nineteenth century.

 

At the same time as his successes in Paris, Meyerbeer, as a Prussian Court Kapellmeister (Director of Music) from 1832, and from 1843 as Prussian General Music Director, was also influential in opera in Berlin and throughout Germany. He was an early supporter of Richard Wagner, enabling the first production of the latter's opera, Rienzi. He was commissioned to write the patriotic opera Ein Feldlager in Schlesien to celebrate the reopening of the Berlin Royal Opera House in 1844 and wrote music for certain Prussian state occasions.

 

Apart from around 50 songs, Meyerbeer wrote little except for the stage. The critical assaults of

Wagner and his supporters, especially after his death, led to a decline in the popularity of his works; his operas were suppressed by the Nazi regime in Germany, and were neglected by opera houses through most of the twentieth century. Meyerbeer's works are only infrequently performed today.