The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer: Volume 4, 1857-1864 The Last YearsTranslated, Edited, and Annotated by Robert Ignatius Letellier
About the Editor:
Robert Ignatius Letellier is a graduate of Rhodes University in Grahamstown (Cape Province), the University of Cambridge, the University of Salzburg, the Pontifical Universitŕ Gregoriana, the Pontifical Istituto Biblico (both in Rome), and the École Biblique (Jerusalem). He is a member of Trinity College, the Centre for Research in Early English Novel (Salzburg), the Meyerbeer Institute (Schloss Thurnau), the Maryvale Institute (Birmingham), and the Board of Continuing Education (Madingley Hall). He lives and works in Cambridge.
This volume presents the fourth and last installment of the diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, the master of French grand opéra. It provides an introduction and translated text of the composer's journal kept from 1857 until three months before his death 2 May 1864. Since the diaries were written for himself, they provide a simple, unadorned record of Meyerbeer's life, his activities, his associates, and his world. Read cumulatively, they present a chronicle of the times. The detailed genesis of his operas, how they were written and produced in the context of a dynamic European theatrical scene, unfolds a broad and various scenario peopled by a host of fascinating players: composers, singers, librettists, authors, directors, publishers, kings and queens, indeed a galaxy of figures from the stage and society of the mid-nineteenth century. The journal is succinct and restrained, but revealingly candid. Meyerbeer's domestic situation, his creative activity, his concerns about health and success, his endless travelling for his art, his innumerable acts of kindness, sketch the picture of a diffident man and committed artist. The diaries are given complete, translated and annotated, with indexes of names, scholars, and stage works. This last volume contains a series of glossaries devoted to Meyerbeer's compositions, as well as the musical and theatrical works he attended daily throughout his life. A bibliography devoted to the composer (documentation, life and works, family), his contemporaries, and the operatic and sociohistorical milieu of his times, completes the critical apparatus. Read reviews of this book:
Review 1
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Review 3ISBN 0-8386-3845-7, Price $69.50
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