work and of his share in the destinies of musical art. Even those who judge it with greater disfavour than myself cannot but recognise that it is worth while to examine closely the constitution of works which between 1830 and 1870 reigned with brilliance not only in Paris, but in all the musical theatres of Europe; some of them are still performed, and have, as it is expressed, kept a public, even after having lost all influence on artists and schools.
I
Jacob Liebmann Beer was born at Berlin on the 23rd September, 1791 and was the son of a rich Jewish banker. The paternal fortune was destined to play no unimportant part in his artistic career. It was not merely that it freed him in his youth from the preoccupation of earning his bread and permitted him thereafter to consecrate his whole time to musical production, which in his case seems to have been a painful and laborious process (in passing I may remark that time has nothing to do with the matter). But more than this, he knew how to employ his money with superior cunning to organise, as it is called now-a-days, the launching of his works, to pave the way for their success and make it last. He did not pay theatrical managers to perform them, because in his day that was not done. But he used to give expensive dinners to journalists before the first nights; he was ready, though clever, with his gold. He had the means for self-advertisement, and made the most of them. Let us add, though the fact is obvious, that all this would have availed him nothing if his art had not contained in itself the material of sucess at the moment
