His style was a queer mixture of German counterpoint, Italian melody and French rhythm, and after blotting up all the popular fashions of the day, he gave his _Robert le Diable_ (_Robert the Devil_), _The Huguenots_ and _Le Prophète_ (_The Prophet_) with different degrees of success in Paris. Eugène Scribe was chief librettist in this period. Later Meyerbeer’s operas were given in Berlin, with Jenny Lind in the title rôles and he became very famous. _Dinorah_ and _L’Africaine_ (_The African Maid_) were very popular and are still in the repertory of opera companies. But his style seems insincere and showy according to those who expect more of opera than grand effects, glitter and elaborate scenery. _The Huguenots_ was probably his finest piece of work. Among other composers in Germany whose names you may come upon in other places are: Heinrich Marschner (1795–1861), Conradin Kreutzer, Lortzing (1801–1851), von Flotow (1812–1883), composer of _Stradella_ and _Martha_, and Otto Nicolai (1810–1849) who wrote the delightful bit of fluff, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. Later we see the old _Singspiel_ take the form of Comic Opera (not _opéra comique_) with such Germans as Carl Millocker and von Suppé and Victor Nessler in his _Trumpeter of Sakkingen_ and _The Pied Piper of Hamelin_, and Johann Strauss, the great Viennese Waltz King, whose “Blue Danube” and other waltzes are so familiar. (Vienna was as famous for the waltz as America is for jazz.) OFFENBACH’S TALES OF HOFFMANN Another German who went to Paris was Jacques Offenbach (1819–1880) from Cologne, who became more of a Parisian than the Parisians. He was quite a fop and Wagner once called him “the musical Clown” for he was often seen wearing a yellow waist-coat and trousers, sky blue coat, grey gloves, a green hat and he carried a red sun shade. How like an electric sign he must have looked! But withal, he was so popular in Vienna that when Wagner approached the Opera House about his _Meistersinger_ he was told that they were too busy producing Offenbach’s operas to consider his. He was the best box-office attraction of his time, and the managers could not get enough of his works. Offenbach was important because he founded a new kind of light opera, or the operetta, which is light in story, charming and winsome. His chief operas are _The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein_, _La Belle Hélène_ and his masterpiece _The Tales of Hoffmann_ of which you probably know the often-played Barcarolle. He felt that it was his finest work and was very eager to be present at its first performance at the Opéra Comique in Paris, but before he had finished orchestrating it, he died. When it was given, the following year, it was praised as the work of a genius.