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= = = = Last years = = = =

Increasing ill @-@ health ( or possibly hypochondria ) now began to restrict Meyerbeer 's output and activities . The death of his beloved mother in 1854 was also a blow . However the success of L 'étoile du nord in 1854 demonstrated that he could still pack the theatres . Following this he began on two new projects , an opera by Scribe based on the biblical story of Judith , and an opéra comique , Le pardon de Ploërmel , ( also known as Dinorah , the title given to the Italian version performed at London ) to a libretto by Jules Barbier . The latter premiered on 4 April 1859 at the Opéra Comique at Paris ; the former , like many previous projects , remained only as sketches . The death of Scribe in 1861 was a further disincentive to Meyerbeer to proceed with his operatic work in progress . In 1862 , in accordance with his original contract with Scribe , he paid Scribe 's widow compensation for not completing Judith .
Nevertheless , Meyerbeer 's last years saw the composition of a good deal of non @-@ operatic music , including a Coronation March for William I of Prussia , ( 1861 ) , an overture for the 1862 International Exhibition in London , and incidental music ( now lost ) to Henry Blaze de Bury 's play La jeunesse de Goethe ( 1860 ) . He composed a few settings of liturgical material , including one of the 91st Psalm ( 1853 ) ; and also choral works for the synagogue at Paris .
Meyerbeer died in Paris on 2 May 1864 . Rossini , who , not having heard the news , came to his apartment the next day intending to meet him , was shocked and fainted . He was moved to write on the spot a choral tribute ( Pleure , pleure , muse sublime ! ) . A special train bore Meyerbeer 's body from the Gare du Nord to Berlin on 6 May , where he was buried in the family vault at the Jewish cemetery in Schönhauser Allee .
L 'Africaine was eventually premiered after Meyerbeer 's death at the Salle Le Peletier on 28 April 1865 in a performing edition undertaken by François @-@ Joseph Fétis .

= = Personality and beliefs = =

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 . They also gave rise to rumours that his success was due to his bribing musical critics . Richard Wagner ( see below ) accused him of being interested only 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 : his extensive diaries and correspondence – which survived the turmoil of 20th @-@ century Europe and have now been published in eight volumes – are an invaluable source for the history of music and theatre in the composer 's time .
Meyerbeer 's personal attachment to Judaism was a mature personal decision – after the death of his maternal grandfather in 1811 he wrote to his mother ' Please accept from me a promise that I will always live in the religion in which he died ' . In his diaries he noted significant family events including birthdays , not by their Gregorian calendar occurrence , but by their Jewish calendar dates . Moreover , he regularly suffered from ( and / or imagined ) anti @-@ Jewish slights throughout his life , warning his brothers frequently in his letters against richess ( Yiddish for ' Jew @-@ hatred ' ) . Writing to Heinrich Heine in 1839 , he offered the fatalistic view :
I believe that richess is like love in the theatres and novels : no matter how often one encounters it ... it never misses its target if effectively wielded ... [ Nothing ] can grow back the foreskin of which we are robbed on the eighth day of life ; those who , on the ninth day , do not bleed from this operation shall continue to bleed an entire lifetime , even after death .
It was probably a similar fatalism that led Meyerbeer never to enter public controversy with those who slighted him , either professionally or personally , although he occasionally displayed his grudges in his Diaries ; for example , on hearing Robert Schumann conduct in 1850 : ' I saw for the first time the man who , as a critic , has persecuted me for twelve years with a deadly enmity.'
In his mature operas Meyerbeer selected stories which almost invariably featured as a major element of storyline a hero living within a hostile environment . Robert , Raoul the Huguenot , Jean the prophet , and the defiant Vasco da Gama in L 'Africaine are all ' outsiders ' . It has been suggested that ' Meyerbeer 's choice of these topics is not accidental ; they reflect his own sense of living in a potentially inimical society.'
Meyerbeer 's relationship with Heine displays the awkwardness and prickliness of the social personae of both parties . Meyerbeer , apart from any of his personal feelings , needed Heine onside as an influential personality and writer on music . He genuinely admired Heine 's verse , and made a number of settings from it . Heine , living in Paris from 1830 , always equivocal about his loyalties between Judaism and Christianity , and always short of money , asked Meyerbeer to intervene with Heine 's own family for financial support and frequently took loans and money from Meyerbeer himself . He was not above threatening Meyerbeer with blackmail by writing satirical pieces about him ( and indeed Meyerbeer paid Heine 's widow to suppress such writings ) . And yet , at Heine 's death in 1856 , Meyerbeer wrote in his diary ' Peace be to his ashes . I forgive him from my heart for his ingratitude and many wickednesses against me.'

= = Music and theatre = =


= = = Music = = =

Meyerbeer did not operate on the basis of any theory or philosophy of music and was not an innovator in harmony or musical form . In the words of John H. Roberts , " He had a rich fund of appealing if somewhat short @-@ breathed melody , commanded an increasingly rich harmonic vocabulary , and was a master of brilliant and novel orchestral effect . But he had very limited skill in thematic development and even less in contrapuntal combination . "
All of his significant music is for the voice ( opera and songs ) and this reflects his detailed grounding in Italian opera . Throughout his career he wrote his operas with specific singers in mind and took great care to temper his writing to their strengths ; but at the same time he seemed little interested in expressing the emotions of his characters , preferring to use his music to underline the larger @-@ scale machinations of the plot . In this way he was close to the ideas of his teacher Vogler , himself renowned for his dramatic depictions of nature and incident in keyboard music , who wrote in 1779 that " writing beautifully is easy ; expression is not too difficult ; but only the genius of a great painter ... can choose for each picture agreeable and natural colours that are particular to it . " Indeed , his devotion to the voice often led him to ignore the dramatic cohesion of his operas ; typically , he would write far too much music and the scores of his operas would have to be drastically cut during rehearsals . ( The lengthy overture to Le prophète had to be cut in its entirety , surviving only in a piano arrangement by Charles @-@ Valentin Alkan ) .
The first signs of Meyerbeer breaking with the Italian traditions in which he had trained are in Il crociato in Egitto . Amongst other notable features of the opera were its lavish orchestral forces ( extending to two onstage military bands in the final act ) . The grandiosity of the work reflected the need to make an impact on the sophisticated and technologically advanced stages of London and Paris , for which it was extensively rewritten . Meyerbeer 's contribution was revealed at this stage to be the combination of Italian vocal lines , German orchestration and harmony , and the use of contemporary theatrical techniques , ideas which he carried forward in Robert and his later works . However Meyerbeer 's background in the Italian operatic traditions can be clearly seen as late as 1859 in the ' mad scene ' in Dinorah ( the virtuoso aria Ombre légère ) .
Typical of Meyerbeer 's innovative orchestration is the use in Robert le diable of dark @-@ toned instruments – bassoons , timpani and low brass , including ophicleide – to characterise the diabolical nature of Bertram and his associates . At one point the arrival of a character is announced by a combination of three solo timpani and pizzicato double @-@ basses . Similar adventurousness is shown in Les Huguenots where the composer uses a solo bass clarinet and solo viola d 'amore to accompany arias . For Le prophète , Meyerbeer considered using the newly invented saxophone . Becker suggests that Meyerbeer in all his grand operas often ' created a deliberately ' unbeautiful ' sound ..... with unusual orchestration designed to express ... content rather than produce a sensuous sound ' and opines that this explains much of the criticism he received from German writers on music .

= = = Theatre = = =

Meyerbeer 's concern to integrate musical power with all the resources of contemporary theatre anticipated in some ways the ideas of Wagner 's Gesamtkunstwerk . Becker writes :
Wagner 's idea of music drama ... was originally developed by way of grand opera ... his ideas could never have been realised in their particular form without the pioneering development [ s ] ... that Meyerbeer 's operas were the first to demand .
Meyerbeer was always concerned to intensify the theatricality of his operas , even when new ideas emerged at a relatively late stage in the music 's composition . An example of his receptiveness was the addition of the provocative " Ballet of the Nuns " in the third act of Robert le diable , at the suggestion of Duponchel . The set for the ballet was an innovative and striking design by Duponchel and Pierre @-@ Luc @-@ Charles Ciceri . Duponchel had also introduced technical innovations for the staging , including ' English traps ' for the sudden appearance and disappearance of the ghosts . ( Meyerbeer was led in fact to complain that the spectacle was too much and was pushing his music into the background ) . In Le prophète the skating ballet , which created a great sensation , was composed after rehearsals had begun , in order to capitalise on the new craze for roller skates . The theatre was also able to use new electrical lighting effects to create a powerful sunrise , and to depict the conflagration which ends the opera .
Meyerbeer 's large choral ' tableaux ' also made a major contribution to the overall dramatic effect ; the composer particularly sought opportunities to write such large @-@ scale crowd scenes , and preferred libretti which offered such possibilities . Crosten writes : ' These massive developed sections are the chief glory of the Meyerbeerian opera , for they are not only big in volume but big in their structural design ' .
Mention should also be made of Meyerbeer 's intense concern with the business of opera , which indeed had formed part of his studies under Vogler . This gave him the background not only to deal with complex contractual issues and to negotiate with publishers , but extended to wooing the press and ' marketing ' in general . Indeed , he was probably the originator of the ' press conference ' at which journalists were fed refreshment and information . This marketing and commercialisation of opera was reinforced by Meyerbeer 's Paris publisher Maurice Schlesinger who had established his fortune on the back of Robert , and even persuaded Honoré de Balzac to write a novella ( Gambara ) to promote Les Huguenots . Schlesinger 's publication of Franz Liszt 's Reminiscences de Robert le diable sold out on the day of issue and was immediately reprinted . Such manoeuvres did little to endear Meyerbeer to his fellow artists , and indeed engendered envious comments of the sort already quoted from Berlioz and Chopin .

= = Reception = =


= = = Musical influence = = =

Meyerbeer had no pupils and no direct ' school ' . Yet as his works spanned the golden age of grand opera , clear traces of his influence can be found in the grand operas of Fromental Halévy , Gaetano Donizetti , Giuseppe Verdi and others . After 1850 , Huebner notes a continuing tradition of operas at Paris where ' principals appear with chorus at the end of an act and where private intrigue conjoins a well @-@ articulated public dimension in the plot ' and cites amongst others Charles Gounod 's La nonne sanglante ( 1854 ) , Ambroise Thomas 's Hamlet and operas by Jules Massenet , amongst them Le roi de Lahore ( 1877 ) and Le Cid ( 1885 ) . The line of succession was however virtually washed away in the tide of Wagner in Paris after 1890 ( see below ) . The influence of Meyerbeer has also been detected in the operas of Antonín Dvořák and other Czech composers , and in the operas of Russian composers including Rimsky @-@ Korsakov and the young Tchaikovsky , who thought Les Huguenots ' one of the greatest works in the repertoire ' .
Themes from Meyerbeer 's works were used by many contemporary composers , often in the form of keyboard paraphprases or fantasies . Perhaps the most elaborate and substantial of these is Franz Liszt 's monumental Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale " Ad nos , ad salutarem undam " , S.259 ( 1852 ) , for organ or pédalier , based on the chorale of the Anabaptist priests in Le prophète and dedicated to Meyerbeer . The work was also published in a version for piano duet ( S.624 ) which was much later arranged for solo piano by Ferrucio Busoni .
Liszt also wrote piano works based on Robert le diable , notably the Réminiscences de Robert le diable subtitled Valse infernale . He also transcribed two pieces from L 'Africaine , as " Illustrations de l 'opéra L 'Africaine " . Frédéric Chopin and Auguste Franchomme jointly composed a Grand duo concertant on themes from the opera , for cello and piano , in 1832 , and the Italian pianist and composer Adolfo Fumagalli composed an elaborate fantasy on the opera for left hand alone as his Op. 106 . Other pieces based on the opera included works by Adolf von Henselt and Jean @-@ Amédée Méreaux . Similar works , of varying musical quality , were churned out by composers for each of the further operas in attempts to cash in on their success .

= = = Critical reception = = =

Meyerbeer 's operas consistently enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime , and the verdict of ( the then pro @-@ Meyerbeer ) Wagner in 1841 , when the Paris Opéra was vainly awaiting Le prophète and L 'Africaine , was not atypical :
The Paris Opéra lies dying . It looks for its salvation to the German Messiah , Meyerbeer ; if he keeps it waiting much longer , its death agonies will begin ... It is for that reason ... that one only sees Robert le Diable and Les Huguenots turning up again when the mediocrities are forced to withdraw .
However , dissenting voices were heard from critics . Not all of these however were on musical grounds . Berlioz for example raised the issue of the inhibiting effects of Meyerbeer 's success ( which he felt particularly as one who struggled to get his works performed ) : " The pressure [ Meyerbeer ] exerts on managers , artists and critics , and consequently on the Paris public , at least as much by his immense wealth as by his eclectic talent , makes all serious success at the Opéra virtually impossible . This baneful influence may still be felt ten years after his death : Heinrich Heine maintains he has ' paid in advance ' . "
Mendelssohn disapproved of Meyerbeer 's works on moral grounds , believing Robert le diable to be ' ignoble ' .
Schumann 's attack on Les Huguenots was clearly a personal diatribe against Meyerbeer 's Judaism : ' Time and time again we had to turn away in disgust ... One may search in vain for a sustained pure thought , a truly Christian sentiment ... It is all contrived , all make believe and hypocrisy ! ... The shrewdest of composers rubs his hands with glee.'
Wagner 's disciple Theodor Uhlig followed Schumann 's Judaeophobic line in his 1850 review of Le prophète : ' To a good Christian [ it ] is at best contrived , exaggerated , unnatural and slick , and it is not possible that the practised propaganda of the Hebrew art @-@ taste can succeed using such means . ' Uhlig 's phrase ' the Hebrew art @-@ taste ' was to be used by Richard Wagner to spark off his attack on Meyerbeer , ' Das Judenthum in der Musik ( Jewishness in Music ) . ' ( see below ) .
In 1911 , the composer Charles Villiers Stanford cited Meyerbeer 's music as an example of the dangers he believed lay in improvising at the piano without a clear plan , ( although there is in fact no evidence to suggest Meyerbeer worked in this way ) , writing : ' Man of genius though he was , as any man who wrote the fourth act of the Huguenots must have been , Meyerbeer is a sign @-@ post of this danger of trusting to the pianoforte as a medium of inspiration.'

= = = Wagner 's campaign against Meyerbeer = = =

The vitriolic 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 ) was facetiously called by Hans von Bülow ' Meyerbeer 's best opera ' . Meyerbeer supported the young Wagner , both financially and in helping to obtain the premiere productions of both Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman at Dresden .
Wagner 's early correspondence with Meyerbeer , up to 1846 , is cringingly obsequious . However , from the early 1840s , as Wagner developed Tannhäuser and Lohengrin , his ideas on opera increasingly diverged from Meyerbeerean standards ; even in 1843 Wagner had written to Schumann condemning Meyerbeer 's work as ' a striving after superficial popularity ' . During 1846 Meyerbeer turned down Wagner 's application for a loan of 1 @,@ 200 thalers , and this may have marked a turning point .
In particular , after 1849 , 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 1849 , Wagner was for some years a political refugee facing a prison sentence or worse should he return to Saxony . During his period of living in exile he had few sources of income 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 . In reaction he published , under a pseudonym , his 1850 essay ' Jewishness in Music ' . Without specifically naming Meyerbeer , he interpreted the popular success of the latter as the undermining of German music by alleged Jewish venality and willingness to cater to the lowest tastes , and attributed the supposed poor quality of such ' Jewish music ' to Jewish speech and song patterns , which ' though the cultured son of Jewry takes untold pains to strip them off , nevertheless they shew an impertinent obstinacy in cleaving to him ' .
In his major theoretical statement , ' Opera and Drama ' ( 1852 ) , Wagner objected to the music of Meyerbeer , asserting its superficiality and incoherence in dramatic terms ; this work contains Wagner 's well @-@ known put @-@ down of Meyerbeer 's operas as ' effects without causes ' . It also contains the sardonic crack that ' [ Rossini ] never could have dreamt that it would some day occur to the Bankers , for whom he had always made their music , to make it for themselves ' . ' Jewishness in Music ' was reissued in 1869 , ( after Meyerbeer 's death ) in an extended form , with a far more explicit attack on Meyerbeer . This version was under Wagner 's own name – and as Wagner had by now a far greater reputation , his views obtained far wider publicity . These attacks on Meyerbeer ( which also included swipes at Felix Mendelssohn ) are regarded by Paul Lawrence Rose as a significant milestone in the growth of German anti @-@ Semitism .
As Wagner prospered , it became second @-@ nature for him , his wife Cosima and the Wagner circle to deprecate Meyerbeer and his works , and Cosima 's Diaries contain numerous instances of this – ( as well as recording a dream of Wagner 's in which he and Meyerbeer were reconciled ) . Wagner 's autobiography ' Mein Leben ' , circulated amongst his friends ( and published openly in 1911 ) , contains constant sniping at Meyerbeer and concludes with Wagner exulting over Meyerbeer 's death . The downgrading of Meyerbeer became a commonplace amongst Wagnerites : in 1898 , George Bernard Shaw , in The Perfect Wagnerite , commented that " Nowadays young people cannot understand how anyone could have taken Meyerbeer 's influence seriously . "
Thus as Wagner 's stock rose , Meyerbeer 's fell . In 1890 , the year before the Paris premiere of Wagner 's Lohengrin , there were no Wagner performances at the Paris Opéra , and 32 performances of Meyerbeer 's four grand operas . In 1909 , there were 60 Wagner performances , and only three of Meyerbeer ( Les Huguenots being the sole work performed ) .

= = = Reevaluation = = =

Meyerbeer 's costly operas , requiring grand casts of leading singers , were gradually dropped from the repertoire in the early 20th century . They were banned in Germany from 1933 , and subsequently in subject countries , by the Nazi regime because the composer was Jewish , and this was a major factor in their further disappearance from the repertory .
One of the first serious post @-@ war studies of Meyerbeer and grand opera was Crosten 's 1948 book Grand Opera : An Art and a Business which laid out the themes and standards for much subsequent research . A major contribution to revival of interest in Meyerbeer was the work of the scholar Heinz Becker , leading to the complete publication , between 1960 and 2006 , of Meyerbeer 's complete diaries and correspondence in German , which are an important source for musical history of the era . The English scholar Robert Letellier has translated the diaries and undertaken a wide range of Meyerbeer studies . Not least , the establishment of a ' Meyerbeer Fan Club ' in America has stimulated interest .
Most importantly the operas themselves are now beginning to be revived and recorded , although despite the efforts of such champions as Dame Joan Sutherland , who took part in performances of , and recorded , Les Huguenots , they have yet to achieve anything like the huge popular following they attracted during their creator 's lifetime . Recordings are now available of all the operas from Il crociato onwards , for many of the earlier Italian operas , and for other pieces including his songs and the incidental music for Struensee .
Amongst reasons often adduced for the dearth of modern productions are the scale of Meyerbeer 's more ambitious works and the cost of mounting them , as well as the alleged lack of virtuoso singers capable of doing justice to Meyerbeer 's demanding music . However , recent successful productions of some of the major operas at relatively small centres such as Strasbourg ( L 'Africaine , 2004 ) and Metz ( Les Huguenots , 2004 ) show that this conventional wisdom can be challenged . A highly successful production of Les Huguenots conducted by Marc Minkowski with stage direction by Gilbert Py was presented at Brussels ' Théâtre de la Monnaie in 2011 , and a new production of the same work opened at the Staatstheater Nürnberg in 2014 , conducted by Guido Johannes Rumstadt with stage direction by Tobias Kratzer , a co @-@ production with Opéra de Nice . In December 2012 , the Royal Opera House in London premiered its first performance of Robert le diable in 120 years . In 2013 , Meyerbeer 's original version of L 'Africaine in a new critical edition by Jürgen Schläder was performed by Chemnitz Opera House under the original title Vasco de Gama . The production was a success with audiences and critics and won the poll of German critics award presented by Opernwelt magazine annually as " Rediscovery of the year " in 2013 .
On 9 September 2013 a plaque to mark Meyerbeer 's last residence was put up at Pariser Platz 6a , Berlin .

= = On film = =

Vernon Dobtcheff played the role of Giacomo Meyerbeer in the 1983 film Wagner .

= = Recordings = =

A Meyerbeer discography ( updated whenever an additional opera by Meyerbeer is issued on CD ) at the Wayback Machine ( archived October 27 , 2009 )
Recordings of Meyerbeer 's operas as listed on operadis @-@ opera @-@ discography.org.uk /


= Washington State Route 221 =

State Route 221 ( SR 221 ) is a 25 @.@ 95 @-@ mile ( 41 @.@ 76 km ) long state highway located entirely within Benton County , Washington , United States . The highway serves to connect the unincorporated community of Paterson to the county seat Prosser . The highway has existed since at least 1926 and was designated as Primary State Highway 8E from 1937 until the 1964 renumbering of Washington state highways .

= = Route description = =

Washington State Route 221 ( SR 221 ) starts at an intersection with SR 14 in the unincorporated community of Paterson . After leaving Paterson the highway travels north through rural farm land as a two @-@ lane highway . A few minor roads are intersected before the roadway turns to the west after about 17 mi ( 27 km ) , before turning back to the north . After the highway resumes its northerly course it climbs into the Horse Heaven Hills , gaining a passing lane through the uphill segments , before finally terminating at SR 22 in south Prosser .
Every year the Washington State Department of Transportation ( WSDOT ) conducts a series of surveys on its highways in the state to measure traffic volume . This is expressed in terms of average annual daily traffic ( AADT ) , which is a measure of traffic volume for any average day of the year . In 2009 , WSDOT calculated that as few as 2 @,@ 000 cars traveled through the central part of the highway , and as many as 2 @,@ 500 cars at the interchange with SR 22 .

= = History = =

The roadway on its current alignment has existed since at least 1926 , however there are records of a road between Paterson and Prosser since 1906 . The highway was designated Secondary State Highway 8E ( SSH 8E ) in 1937 , but the route number was changed to SR 221 during the 1964 state highway renumbering .
High winds have forced the closure of SR 221 in 2003 , 2004 , and 2005 due to large amounts of dust being blown around , causing visibility to drop to almost zero through the Horse Heaven Hills .

= = Major intersections = =

The entire highway is within unincorporated Benton County .


= Superman : Escape from Krypton =

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