Giacomo Meyerbeer - Personality and Beliefs

Personality and Beliefs

Meyerbeer's immense wealth (increased by the success of his operas) and his continuing adherence to his Jewish religion set him apart somewhat from many of his musical contemporaries. They also gave rise to rumours that his success was due to his bribing musical critics. Richard Wagner (see below) accused him of being interested only in money, not music. Meyerbeer was, however, a deeply serious musician and a sensitive personality. He philosophically resigned himself to being a victim of his own success: his extensive diaries and correspondence — which survived the turmoil of 20th century Europe and have now been published in eight volumes — are an invaluable source for the history of music and theatre in the composer's time.

Meyerbeer's personal attachment to Judaism was a mature personal decision – after the death of his maternal grandfather in 1811 he wrote to his mother 'Please accept from me a promise that I will always live in the religion in which he died'. In his diaries he noted significant family events including birthdays, not by their Gregorian calendar occurrence, but by their Jewish calendar dates. Moreover he regular suffered from (and/or imagined) anti-Jewish slights throughout his life, warning his brothers frequently in his letters against richess (Yiddish for 'Jew-hatred'). Writing to Heinrich Heine in 1839, he offered the fatalistic view:

I believe that richess is like love in the theatres and novels: no matter how often one encounters it...it never misses its target if effectively wielded... can grow back the foreskin of which we are robbed on the eighth day of life; those who, on the ninth day, do not bleed from this operation shall continue to bleed an entire lifetime, even after death.

It was probably a similar fatalism that led Meyerbeer never to enter public controversy with those who slighted him, either professionally or personally, although he occasionally displayed his grudges in his Diaries; for example, on hearing Robert Schumann conduct in 1850: 'I saw for the first time the man who, as a critic, has persecuted me for twelve years with a deadly enmity.'

In his mature operas Meyerbeer selected stories which almost invariably featured as a major element of storyline a hero living within a hostile environment. Robert, Valentin the Huguenot, Jean the prophet, and the defiant Vasco da Gama in L'Africaine are all 'oustsiders'. It has been suggested that 'Meyerbeer's choice of these topics is not accidental; they reflect his own sense of living in a potentially inimical society.'

Meyerbeer's relationship with Heine displays the awkwardness and prickliness of the social personas of both parties. Meyerbeer, apart from any of his personal feelings, needed Heine onside as an influential personality and writer on music. He genuinely admired Heine's verse, and made a number of settings from it. Heine, living in Paris from 1830, always equivocal about his loyalties between Judaism and Christianity, and always short of money, asked Meyerbeer to intervene with Heine's own family for financial support and frequently took loans and money from Meyerbeer himself. He was not above threatening Meyerbeer with blackmail by writing satirical pieces about him (and indeed Meyerbeer paid Heine's widow to suppress such writings). And yet, at Heine's death in 1856, Meyerbeer wrote in his diary 'Peace be to his ashes. I forgive him from my heart for his ingratitude and many wickednesses against me.'