An Introduction to the Dramatic Works of Giacomo Meyerbeer: Operas, Ballets, Cantatas, Plays (review)

At last, a survey of Meyerbeer's operas and other dramatic works in English! For those of us who have been trying to integrate Meyerbeer into our undergraduate courses on French and Italian opera for some time now (with varying degrees of success), this book is a blessing, helping to fill the space that previous collections of articles such as Mark Everist's Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Aldershot, 2005) have not filled. Letellier commands great swathes of Meyerbeerian information, and gave us the English translation of the composer's diaries in four volumes between 1999 and 2004. Surprising, then, is the relative brevity of this book, which, as an 'introduction' to the subject, limits itself in scope and range of the information presented. Works are dealt with in generic chapters rather than chronologically, but as Meyerbeer's Italian and French careers were more or less successive—he wrote Italian operas (covered in ch. 4), followed by French grand operas (ch. 5), followed by French opéras-comiques (ch. 6)—large tracts of the book are presented in chronological order anyway. Adopting a linear organization may be more revealing of the life Meyerbeer actually led, particularly after 1842, as the composer shared his time between Paris and the court of the King of Prussia, where he was appointed Generalmusikdirektor.

But then, biographical detail is not the focus of this study. The format for the presentation of each work is identical, beginning with details of the authors, the work's premiere, and an act-by-act synopsis of the plot, followed by an exploration of the dramatic themes and the social/historical/artistic/religious contexts. Formal musical procedures are examined, as are Meyerbeer's fine skills in the musical depiction of character psychology. These discussions are in no way systematic, dealing with each opera in its entirety (the book would have been well over 1,000 pages had this been the case), but rather present selective examples of highly effective theatrical and musical dramaturgy around which to develop analyses of Meyerbeer's idiom. At the end of every section the reader finds a potted performance history from the date of the premiere to the present day. At the end of the book an appendix gives short biographical details of all Meyerbeer's librettists, followed by a bibliography, both general and of musical works. The reader could have benefitted from a discography, as recordings are not excluded from the prose text on performance history, and details for further listening would have been appreciated.

Before going any further, it should be stated that the imperfect editing and copy-editing of this volume does no favours to the author, and particularly not to Ashgate. It could also have been a beautiful book with detailed, colourful illustrations, but what we've been given is instead a cheap alternative. To be sure, there are considerable numbers of music examples and illustrations, but there are occassional editing errors in the music examples, and many of the illustrations are too small and the quality of reproduction often abysmal. The layout is also rather amateurish, with many blank half pages to accommodate music examples (and sometimes even when no musical example follows!). These complaints notwithstanding, the strength of Letellier's text lies in the integrated nature of his arguments, presenting the 'long view' of Meyerbeer's output and his importance in the history of opera in the nineteenth century. Letellier clearly demonstrates that from as early as the Singspiel Jepthas Gelübde of 1812, the essence of Meyerbeer's distinct formula, which he was to hone and perfect over the next fifty years, was already present: his vocal writing reflected and realized the psychological states of characters, explicit directions were given for the psychological interpretation of different roles, characterization was achieved through the deployment of specific instrumental combinations, recurring motifs were used...