The Loeb Music Library recently digitized several scores by Giacomo Meyerbeer (Jacob Liebermann Meyer Beer, 1791-1864), a German-born musician who became one of the most successful stage composers of the 19th century. Nine complete operas are now available, several in multiple editions, which document Meyerbeer’s compositional development though a legendary partnership with French dramatist and librettist Eugène Scribe, culminating in iconic works which led to the establishment of French grand opera as a distinct genre.

Giacomo Meyerbeer, Title page, Robert le Diable. Mus 743.3.601.5

Giacomo Meyerbeer, Title page, Robert le Diable. Mus 743.3.601.5 (click to enlarge)

In his mature scores — Robert le Diable (1831), Les Huguenots (1836), Le Prophète (1849), L’étoile du Nord (1854), L’Africaine (1865, posth.), all to libretti by Scribe and first performed at the Paris Opéra, and Le Pardon de Ploërmel (Dinorah) (1859), first given at the Opéra comique (Salle Favart) to a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré (librettists also for Gounod’s Faust and Roméo et Juliette, Thomas’ Mignon and Hamlet, and Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann) — the composer established a highly popular genre in which musical numbers combined pomp, ritual, and highly inventive orchestration evoking local color, in works where large choruses and intimate arias and duets are interspersed with balletic divertissements within the context of a sweeping historical canvas.

  • [Robert le diable. Vocal score]
    Robert le Diable : opéra en 5 actes / paroles de MM. E. Scribe & G. Delavigne ; musique de Giacomo Meyerbeer ; partition de piano, arrangée par J.P. Pixis. [1st ed.]. Paris: M. Schlesinger, [1831]. Mus 743.3.601.5
  • [Huguenots. Vocal score]
    Les Huguenots : opéra en cinq actes / paroles de Scribe ; musique de G. Meyerbeer ; partition chant et piano. Ed. définitive et complète. Paris : Ph. Maquet, [1888?]. Mus 743.3.624
  • [Prophète. Vocal score]
    Le prophète : opéra en 5 actes / paroles de M.E. Scribe ; musique de G. Meyerbeer ; partition pour piano et chant ; arrangée par Garaudé. Paris : Brandus & Cie., [1849?]. Mus 743.3.661.1
  • [Étoile du Nord. Vocal score]
    L’étoile du nord : opéra comique en trois actes / paroles de Mr. E. Scribe ; musique de G. Meyerbeer ; partition piano et chant par A. de Garandé. Paris : Brandus, [1854?]. Mus 743.3.642
  • [Étoile du Nord. Vocal score. Italian]
    La stella del Nord : opera semiseria in tre atti / di Eugenio Scribe ; traduzione di E. Picchi ; musica di G. Meyerbeer ; riduzione con accompagnamento di pianoforte. Milano : F. Lucca, [1868?]. Mus 743.3.640.5
  • [Africaine. Vocal score. Selections]
    L’Africaine : deuxième partie de l’opéra en 5 actes / paroles de E. Scribe ; musique de G. Meyerbeer ; partition chant et piano [par E. Vauthrot] précédée d’une préface de J. Fétis et contenant 22 morceaux et fragments inédits … qui n’ont pas été exécutés à la représentation de l’Opéra à Paris. Paris : G. Brandus & S. Dufour, [1865?]. Mus 743.3.666
  • [Africaine. Vocal score]
    L’Africaine : opéra en cinq actes / paroles de E. Scribe ; musique de Giacomo Meyerbeer ; partition chant & piano arrangée par E. Vauthrot. Paris : G. Brandus & S. Dufour, [1865?]. Mus 743.3.666.3
  • [Africaine. Vocal score]
    L’Africaine : opéra en 5 actes / paroles de E. Scribe ; musique de G. Meyerbeer ; partition chant & piano arrangée par E. Vauthrot. Paris : G. Brandus & S. Dufour, [1865?] . Mus 743.3.666.5
  • [Le Pardon de Ploërmel (Dinorah)]
    Le pardon de Ploërmel : opéra comique en trois actes / paroles de J. Barbieret M. Carré ; musique de Giacomo Meyerbeer ; partition chant et piano. Paris : G. Brandus et S. Dufour, [1859?]. Mus 743.3.692.5

Also available are three early Italian works. Margarita d’Anjou premiered at La Scala in 1820, to a text by Felice Romani, librettist for many operas of Bellini (including La Sonnambula and Norma), Donizetti (L’elisir d’amore, Lucrezia Borgia, Anna Bolena), Rossini (Il Turco in Italia) and Verdi (Un giorno di regno).

Emma di Resburgo and Il Crociato in Egitto are both Venetian operas, the former first given at the Teatro San Benedetto in 1819, and Il Crociato in Egitto at Teatro La Fenice in 1824, to libretti by Gaetano Rossi, librettist of Rossini’s Tancredi and Semiramide, as well as to many operas by Johann Simon Mayr, Saverio Mercadante, and Donizetti (Linda di Chamounix, Maria Padilla). Il Crociato in Egitto was the first work to bring Meyerbeer recognition throughout Europe, and the last operatic work by a major composer to contain a major role for castrato (1824).

  • [Margarita d’Anjou. Vocal score]
    Margherita d’Anjou : opera semiseria in due atti / Composto e ridotto per il cembalo da G. Meyerbeer. Paris : M. Schlesinger, [1827?]. Mus 743.3.610 B
  • [Emma di Resburgo. Vocal score. German & Italian]
    Emma von Roxburgh : grosse Oper in zwei Aufzügen / componirt von J. Meyerbeer ; vollständiger Klavier-Auszug mit deutschem und italienischem text von J.P. Schmidt. Berlin : in der Schlesingerschen Buch- und Musikhandlung ; Schlesinger, [1820?]. Mus 743.3.676
  • [Crociato in Egitto. Vocal score]
    Il crociato in Egitto : opera seria. Ridotto con accompagniamento de pianoforte. Paris, Chez Pacini, [18–]. Mus 743.3.650

Find these scores in our collection of Digital Scores and Libretti, or browse the list in HOLLIS.

Finally, from library’s general collections is a digitized volume of arias with several selections from Meyerbeer’s works, published in 1909, testimony to his long-standing popularity. He was, after all, the operatic composer who filled the “gap” between the death of Mozart (1791) and the birth of Richard Strauss (1864)!

-Robert Dennis