Meyerbeer

“I keep a mental picture of Meyerbeer,” he said, referring to the once ubiquitous and now rarely heard 19th-century composer, “just to remind myself: Here today, gone tomorrow.”

She also cultivates 18th- and 19th-century operatic repertoire from Mozart to Meyerbeer, at prominent houses such as Zurich Opera and the Paris Opera.

In her first season in Hanover, Berman scored a hit with Halévy’s religious potboiler “La Juive” — which, like Meyerbeer’s grand operas, faded from the repertory by the early 20th century.

Her first was “L’Enfant de la montagne,” published when she was just 19 in a collection organized by Meyerbeer, Paganini and Cherubini.

Grand operas by Meyerbeer are now treated as curiosities, yet during his lifetime they were ubiquitous.