MEYERBEER 



3777 



MIAMI 



Tenochtitlan, meaning cactus on a stone. Later 

 the name Mexico was chosen, as a mark of 

 honor to their god of war, Mexitli. When the 

 Spaniards reached the city, in 1519, it contained 

 50,000 buildings and was ten miles in circum- 

 ference. The army of Cortez practically de- 

 stroyed it, and it was rebuilt by native work- 

 men under the direction of the conqueror. In 

 1600 it had about 15,000 inhabitants, in 1800 

 about 120,000, and in 1910 the population was 

 471,066. 



Mexico City was the objective point of the 

 American troops during the Mexican War of 

 1846-1848, and was captured by them in 1847 

 (see MEXICAN WAR; CHAPULTEPEC, BATTLE OF). 

 During the revolutionary disturbances following 

 the abdication of Porfirio Diaz (which see) the 

 capital city played an all-important role, for 

 the contending factions all sought to gain pos- 

 session of it. It was occupied in turn by Car- 

 ranza, Zapata and Villa, and was the headquar- 

 ters of Carranza when, in June, 1916, he issued 

 a note to the United States demanding the 

 withdrawal of American troops from Mexican 

 soil, which they had occupied in pursuit of 

 bandits. For details, see the article MEXICO, 

 subtitle Government and History. 



Consult Enoch's Mexico; Percival's Mexico 

 City. 



MEYERBEER, mi'erbayr, GIACOMA (1791- 

 1864), a German composer whose best opera, 

 Les Huguenots, still enjoys the popular favor 

 which was meted out to it upon its first per- 

 formance in 1836. Meyerbeer, first known as 

 JAKOB MEYER BEER, was born at Berlin, of a 

 wealthy and talented Jewish family. At the age 

 of seven he played in public one of ' Mozart's 

 concertos, and had he followed his talent in 

 this direction he would have ranked among the 

 foremost pianists. But he was ambitious to 

 become a famous composer, and the failure of 

 his first two operas, Jcphthah's Vow and Abime- 

 lek, did not dishearten him. He went to Italy 

 to study vocal composition, and at Venice was 

 so captivated, by the style of Rossini that he 

 produced a series of seven highly-successful 

 Italian operas. A few years later he composed 

 his first French opera, Robert le Diable, and 

 his masterpiece, Les Huguenots. 



After his appointment by the king of Prussia 

 as his music director in Berlin, Meyerbeer 

 composed his two other great works, Le Proph- 

 ete and L'Ajricaine (The Prophet and The Afri- 

 can), and the comic opera, Dinorah. Through 

 his efforts Wagner, who was then languishing 

 in poverty and exile, was able to obtain a hear- 



ing in Berlin, and with Jenny Lind as prima 

 donna and Meyerbeer as conductor Wagner's 

 Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman scored bril- 

 liantly. 



Critics disagree as to the relative merits of 

 Meyerbeer as a composer. Some maintain that 

 he labored more zealously for theatrical effect 

 than for artistic merit; however, it is generally 

 agreed that, although he adopted widely differ- 

 ent styles of composition, he mastered the best 

 effects of the various schools and utilized them 

 to brilliant advantage. 



MEZZO-RILIEVO, med'zo relyavo, a form 

 of relief sculpture (see RELIEF) in which the 

 figures project one-half their thickness from the 

 background. The term means semirelief. 

 Though the figures in mezzo-rilievo are 

 rounded, no parts are separate from the surface 

 upon which they are carved. This form of 

 sculpture is higher than bas-relief (which see) 

 and lower than high-relief (see ALTO-RILIEVO) . 



MEZZOTINT, med'zo tint, or mez'otint, 

 meaning middle tint, is a process of engraving 

 on copper or steel, in imitation of painting 

 in India ink, the lights 'and shadows being 

 scraped and burnished out of a prepared dark 

 ground. Mezzotint does not involve the la- 

 bor entailed by line engraving, in which the 

 lines are plowed into the copper. Because 

 of the range of tone in mezzotint, it is ad- 

 mirably adapted to depicting the various tex- 

 tures in a portrait or the planes of a landscape, 

 but it is not a suitable form of engraving where 

 small detail is demanded. Lieutenant-General 

 Ludvig von Siegen, in 1642, invented the mez- 

 zotint. Later he explained the process to 

 Prince Rupert, who introduced it into England. 

 It was brought into use in North America in 

 1830, and was long a favorite with early maga- 

 zine publishers. See ENGRAVING; ETCHING. 



MIAM'I, FLA., the county seat of Dade 

 County, in the southeastern part of the state, 

 is a noted winter resort and one of the princi- 

 pal shipping points on the Southern Atlantic 

 coast. The city has developed since 1896, when 

 the location was chosen as the southern ter- 

 minus of the Florida East Coast Railway, a 

 line later extended to Key West, 156 miles 

 southwest, over the ocean. Miami is 366 miles 

 south of Jacksonville, and is on Biscayne Bay. 

 at the mouth of the Miami River, which is the 

 outlet of one of the large canals draining the 

 Everglades. Since the improvement of Miami 

 harbor, the city has direct steamboat communi- 

 cation with Havana, Cuba; San Juan, Porto 

 Rico, and Nassau, in the Bahama Islands. 



