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Meyerbeer was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf, near Berlin, Germany with the name Jacob Liebmann Beer. His father was the enormously wealthy financier Jacob Judah Herz Beer (1769-1825) and his mother, Amalia Liebmann Meyer Wulff (1767-1854) also came from the wealthy elite. Their other children included the astronomer Wilhelm Beer and the poet Michael Beer.
Meyerbeer made his debut as a nine-year old playing a Mozart concerto in Berlin. Throughout his youth, although he was determined to become a musician, he found it difficult to decide between playing and composition. Certainly other professionals in the decade 1810-1820, including Moscheles, considered him amongst the greatest virtuosi of his period.
In his youth Beer studied with Antonio Salieri and the German master and friend of Goethe, Carl Friedrich Zelter. Realizing, however, that a full understanding of Italian opera was essential for his musical development, he went to study in Italy for some years, during which time he adopted the first name Giacomo.
The also adopted the ``Meyer'' in his surname after the death of his great-grandfather. It was during this time that he became acquainted with, and impressed by, the works of his contemporary Gioacchino Rossini.
Meyerbeer's name first became known internationally with his opera Il crociato in Egitto this is also the last opera ever to feature a castrato.
He became virtually a superstar with Robert le Diable (Robert the Devil), produced in Paris in 1831 and regarded by some as the first grand opera, although this honor rightly belongs to Auber's La muette de Portici.
The fusion of dramatic music, melodramatic plot and, as customary at this time, sumptuous staging proved a sure-fire formula which Meyerbeer repeated in Les Huguenots (1836), Le prophète (1849), and L'Africaine, (produced posthumously in 1865).
All of these operas held the international stage throughout the 19th century, as did the more pastoral Dinorah (1859).
However, because they were expensive to stage, requiring large casts of leading singers, and subject to consistent attack from the prevalent Wagnerian schools, they gradually fell into desuetude.
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. That also gave rise to malicious rumours that his success was due to his bribing musical critics...
Richard Wagner accused him of being only interested 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.
The abrasive campaign of Richard Wagner against Meyerbeer was to a great extent responsible for the decline of Meyerbeer's popularity after his death in 1864.
This campaign was as much a matter of personal spite as of racism - Wagner had learnt a great deal from Meyerbeer and indeed Wagner's early opera Rienzi (1842) has, facetiously, been called ``Meyerbeer's most successful work''...
Meyerbeer supported the young Wagner, both financially and in obtaining a production of Rienzi at Dresden.
However, Wagner resented Meyerbeer's continuing success at a time when his own vision of German opera had little chance of prospering.
After the May Uprising in Dresden of 18494.5, Wagner was for some years a political refugee facing a prison sentence or worse in Saxony. During this period when he was gestating his Ring cycle he had few sources of income apart from journalism and benefactors, and little opportunity of getting his own works performed.
The success of Le Prophète sent Wagner over the edge, and he was also deeply envious of Meyerbeer's wealth. After Meyerbeer's death Wagner reissued his 1850 essay ``Das Judenthum in der Musik'' (Jewry in Music)4.6,in 1868, in an extended form, with a far more explicit attack on Meyerbeer. This version was under Wagner's own name - for the first version he had sheltered behind a pseudonym - and as Wagner had by now a far greater reputation, his views obtained far wider publicity.
These attacks on Meyerbeer (which also included a swipe at Felix Mendelssohn) are regarded by Paul Lawrence Rose as a significant milestone in the growth of German anti-Semitism.