The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, vol. 1, 1791-1839 (review)

The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer. Vol. 1, 1791-1839. Translated, edited, and annotated by Robert Ignatius Letellier. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1999. [578 p. ISBN 0-8386-3789-2. $65.]

To say that Robert Ignatius Letellier's translation of the Meyerbeer diaries is the most important work on the composer to be published in English to date may seem an overstatement, but to those English-reading scholars who are not fluent in German, French, or Italian, this work should elicit sighs of relief. Until now, students of Giacomo Meyerbeer and his music have relied on the four-volume Briefwechsel und Tagebücher edited by Heinz Becker and Gudrun Becker (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1960- 85) for primary source materials. The Beckers edited and annotated Meyerbeer's diaries, appointment books (actually pocket calendars), and letters up through 1849 (the work is ongoing by others) and published them in their original languages. Their edition will continue to hold pride of place among scholars because it contains Meyerbeer's correspondence, but Letellier has done a great service to English readers by translating the diaries and appointment books.

Meyerbeer kept a sporadic record of his day-to-day activities beginning in 1811, when he was in his twentieth year, and continuing until only a few months before his death in 1864. Letellier's first volume covers 1812 through 1839. (The diary for 1811 is apparently lost.) Some of the diaries, notably those for 1812, the first half of 1813, and the first months of 1831, are remarkably detailed. In others, entries are fewer, taking the form of daily jottings, periodic overviews of weeks or months, or, in one fascinating case, a lengthy letter that Letellier calls an "epistolary diary" (p. 39). Unfortunately, Meyerbeer kept no journal for most of the 1820s (the period of his Italian journeys) or the year 1830.

Letellier's translation shows much care and attention to detail. Indeed, his reverence for and approach to these documents is clear from the beginning. The opening sentence of the section titled "A Note on the Translation and Critical Apparatus" reads like a sworn affidavit: Letellier declares that the book is a "full and faithful translation" of Meyerbeer's writing (p. 23). He continues by assuring the reader that "every effort has been made to reflect Meyerbeer's prose in all its simplicity and occasional awkwardness." The most telling of such efforts is Letellier's handling of the composer's idiosyncratic habits of slipping French and Italian words into his otherwise German prose and using gallicisms and germanized French verbs. Letellier translates these "hybridizations" but always points the reader to Meyerbeer's original language by means of copious endnotes.

Although the dust jacket states that the language of the Meyerbeer diaries is "simple and unadorned," the composer's world as revealed therein belies that simplicity. One would be hard-pressed to find a first-person account by another individual who lived life as fully as the young Meyerbeer. His credo is summed up in his own words: "Two days without a play is too much for a man of the theater like myself" (p. 327). Indeed, there is hardly a daily entry before the 1830s that does not bear witness to the young composer's attendance at some play, opera, ballet, recital, or concert. Fortunately for scholars today, Meyerbeer was an astute observer, a keen listener, and a knowledgeable critic who did not shy away from expressing his opinion. He was unable to note attendance at any performance, whether an informal soirée or a theatrical production, without offering his criticism. His jottings thereby provide invaluable information on the reception of new works and revivals of old ones, the skills of individual performers, the acoustical properties of theaters, and much more. Letellier assists the reader with a critical apparatus that is one of the book's most valuable assets. He provides pertinent information--genre, number of acts, location and...