Meyerbeer is a composer who defies classification, or who, at least, may be classified in three different ways. As the author of the _Crociato_, he belongs to Italy, and the school of Rossini; _Robert le Diable_ exhibits him as a composer chiefly of the German school, with a tendency to follow in the steps of Weber; but _Robert_, _les Huguenots_, _le Prophète_, _l'Etoile du Nord_, and, above all _Dinorah_, are also characteristic of the composer himself. The committee of the London International Exhibition has justly decided that Meyerbeer is a German composer, and there is no doubt about his having been born in Germany, and educated for some time under the same professor as Karl Maria Von Weber; but it is equally certain that he wrote those works to which he owes his great celebrity for the Académie Royale of Paris, and as we are just now dealing with the history of the French Opera, this, I think, is the proper place in which to introduce the most illustrious of living and working composers. [Sidenote: REHEARSALS.] "The composer of _Il Crociato in Egitto_, an amateur, is a native of Berlin, where his father, a Jew, who is since dead, was a banker of great riches. The father's name was Beer, Meyer being merely a Jewish prefix, which the son thought fit to incorporate with his surname. He was a companion of Weber, in his musical studies. He had produced other operas which had been well received, but none of them was followed by or merited the success that attended _Il Crociato_." So far Mr. Ebers, who, in a few words, tells us a great deal of Meyerbeer's early career. The said _Crociato_, written for Venice, in 1824, was afterwards produced at the Italian Opera of Paris in 1825, six years before _Robert le Diable_ was brought out at the Académie. In the summer of 1825, a few months before its production in Paris, it was modified in London, and Mr. Ebers informs us that the getting up of the opera, to which nine months were devoted at the Théâtre Italien, occupied at the King's Theatre only one. Such rapid feats are familiar enough to our operatic managers and musical conductors. But it must be remembered that a first performance in England is very often less perfect than a dress rehearsal in France; and, moreover, that between bringing out an original work (or an old work, in an original style), in Paris, and bringing out the same work afterwards, more or less conformably to the Parisian[94] model, in London, there is the same difference as between composing a picture and merely copying one. No singers and musicians read better than those of the French Académie, and it is a terrible mistake to suppose that so much time is required at that theatre for the production of a grand opera on account of any difficulty in making the _artistes_ acquainted with their parts. _Guillaume Tell_ was many months in rehearsal, but the orchestra played the overture at first sight in a manner which astonished and delighted Rossini. The great, and I may add, the