Mayerbeer is a catalogue spelling of Meyerbeer, referring to Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), one of the most successful opera composers of the nineteenth century. Born Jacob Liebmann Beer in Berlin, he made his career principally in Paris.

Meyerbeer’s grand operas include Robert le diable, Les Huguenots, Le prophète and L’Africaine. They became defining works of French grand opera, combining spectacle, chorus, ballet and vocal display.

His music is theatrical, large-scaled and expertly calculated for dramatic effect. He understood the opera house as a machine of sound, sight and public excitement.

Later taste turned against him, but his influence on nineteenth-century opera was immense. Meyerbeer helped build the grand operatic colossus that later composers either inherited or rebelled against.