Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jacob Liebmann Beer) (5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, who with his 1831 opera Robert le diable and its successors 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 which helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth-century.