Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) was a German-born composer who became the leading master of French grand opera. Born Jacob Liebmann Beer in Berlin, he built an international career through Italy and Paris.

His major operas include Robert le diable, Les Huguenots, Le prophète and L’Africaine. These works combined large choruses, ballet, spectacle and demanding vocal writing on an unprecedented scale.

Meyerbeer’s music is theatrical, resourceful and brilliantly calculated for the opera house. He understood how public drama, private emotion and scenic machinery could be fused into grand effect.

His reputation later suffered from changing taste and polemic, but his influence on nineteenth-century opera was immense. Meyerbeer helped define the very idea of operatic spectacle.