=Its Change of Style=.—Auber’s _La Muette de Portici_ (The Dumb Girl of Portici—known also as Masaniello), produced at the Académie de Musique in 1828, formed the point of departure for the new style. Though it held to the traditional form of Grand Opéra, it was in spirit, theme and treatment a startling change from the ordinarily genial works of this composer, characterized as it was by a force and fire, a vigor and decision which he had never shown before and was never to show again. It marks the beginning of the modern historical opera, the complete abandonment of classical and ancient history as the only appropriate material for Grand Opéra. The people were brought upon the stage not as slaves or as meekly acquiescing in the will of those in authority, but as insurrectionists demanding rights of which they had been defrauded. The story of the Neapolitan fisherman leading his comrades into rebellion against their tyrannical rulers had a powerful effect in the agitated state of political affairs which culminated in the revolutions of 1830. It is significant that a performance of _La Muette de Portici_ immediately preceded the riots in Brussels, which in that year resulted in the expulsion of the Dutch from Belgium. Rossini’s _William Tell_, which followed in 1829, manifested precisely the same tendencies, musically as well as dramatically. Both were destined to be cast into the shade by the works of a third composer who gave the French grand opera a style which practically dictated conditions on all stages for half a century and is still not without influence. [Illustration: GIACOMO MEYERBEER.] =Meyerbeer=.—This composer was =Giacomo Meyerbeer= (1791-1864), German by birth and early education, Italian by training in more mature years, and finally French by adoption. A juvenile pianist of great promise, he studied with Clementi; he went through a severe course of fugue and counterpoint with Zelter, the teacher of Mendelssohn; in composition he was a fellow-student with Weber under the famous Abbé Vogler. In Vienna he knew Beethoven and was advised by Salieri to study in Italy, where he wrote a number of Italian operas after the style of Rossini. In 1826, he went to Paris, the Mecca of all opera composers, with the design of making himself familiar with the conditions of Grand Opéra.