Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer was a German opera composer, linking Mozart and Wagner. With his 1831 opera Robert le diable and its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera "decisive character". Meyerbeer's grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition. These were employed in the context of sensational and melodramatic libretti created by Eugène Scribe and were enhanced by the up-to-date theatre technology of the Paris Opéra. They set a standard that helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth century.