ABSTRACT
Giacomo Meyerbeer, once regarded as a luminary of the musical firmament, and whose works were performed on all the operatic stages of the world with a fame like that of Mozart's, has been under a cloud for too long. Far from being the facile products of a populist showman, Meyerbeer's dramatic oeuvre shows musical consistency and high seriousness, and provides an invitation to reflect on the processes of history and some of the most moving issues of human experience. Faith, exile and integration, partisanship and universality, hatred and sacrificial love are ever-recurrent issues informing his choices of subject and text. Meyerbeer sought an aspiring faith, reflected in the ideals of personal spirituality, morality and the essential nobility of humanity. Meyerbeer's work deserves attention for its meticulous research, its integration of music, text and design, its dramatic pacing, brilliant vocal writing and highly original scoring.
