Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1863), first known as Jacob Meyer Beer, the son of the wealthy Jewish banker Beer, of Berlin, was an ‘infant prodigy,’ for, when but nine years old, he was accounted the best pianist in Berlin. The first teacher to exert a decided influence on him was Abbé Vogler, organist and theoretician, of Darmstadt, to whom he went in 1810, living in his home and, with Carl Maria von Weber, taking daily lessons in counterpoint, fugue, and organ playing. Appointed composer to the court by the grand duke two years later, his first opera, ‘Jephtha’s Vow,’ failed at Darmstadt (1811), and his second, _Alimelek_, at Vienna in 1814. Though cruelly discouraged, he took Salieri’s advice and, persevering, went to Italy to study vocalization and form a new style. In Venice Rossini’s influence affected him so powerfully that, giving up all idea of developing a style of his own, he produced the seven Italian operas already mentioned, with brilliant and unlooked-for success, which, however, did not impress his former fellow student, Weber, who deplored them as treasonable to the ideals of German art. Meyerbeer himself, before long, regretted his defection. In fact, the last of the operas of this Italian period, _Il Crociato in Egitto_ (Venice, 1824), is no longer so evidently after the manner of Rossini. It was given all over Italy, in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and even at Rio de Janeiro. Weber considered it a sign that the composer would soon abandon the Italian style and return to a higher ideal. The success of _Il Crociato_ gave Meyerbeer an excellent opportunity of visiting Paris, in consequence of Rossini’s staging it at the Italiens, in 1826, where it achieved a triumph. The grief into which the death of his father and of his two children plunged him interrupted for some time his activity in the operatic field. He returned to Germany and until 1830 wrote nothing for public performance, but composed a number of psalms, motets, cantatas, and songs of an austerely sentimental character, among them his well-known ‘The Monk.’ This was his second, or German, period.