Otto Nicolai

(b Kaliningrad, 9 June 1810; d Berlin, 11 May 1849). German composer and conductor. He studied in Berlin (with Zelter) and in Rome (with Baini), where he was organist at the Prussian Embassy chapel (1833-6). Contact with the theatre led him to drop contrapuntal studies and turn to composing opera. He made a reputation in Trieste and Turin before becoming principal conductor at the Vienna Hofoper (1841-7), where his uncompromising standards, and energy in founding the Vienna Philharmonic Concerts, made a great impact. In 1848 he returned to Berlin as opera Kapellmeister and cathedral choir director. His new German opera Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849), which brought to a peak the bourgeois Romantic comic opera and his own creativity, was his masterpiece, reconciling his conflicting imaginative and intellectual impulses. His church and orchestral music is conventional, while his partsongs and choruses show his penchant for felicitous melodies.

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Nicolai, Otto (Königsberg, 1810-49, Berlin), a pupil of K. F. Zelter, became a composer and conductor in Vienna (1837) and Berlin (1847). He is remembered as the composer of Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, an opera after Shakespeare for which S. Mosenthal wrote the libretto.

• Period: Romantic (1820-1869)
• Country: Germany
• Born: June 09, 1810 in Königsberg, Germany
• Died: May 11, 1849 in Berlin, Germany
• Genres: Choral Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Symphony

Biography

Otto Nicolai has come to be viewed by many as a one-work composer. The work that comes to mind, his opera, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor), is rightly regarded as his greatest. Yet others among his works are worth hearing, and he surely would have produced more had his life not ended so prematurely. Nicolai was artistically bound by a certain perfectionism and caution that hampered his productivity. He was offered the libretto to Nabucco, for instance, and turned it down, instead choosing the now-unknown Il proscritto; Verdi set Nabucco to music and scored his first great triumph. His self-critical views are well-documented in his various essays on aesthetics and in his diary entries. Nicolai is also remembered for his high performance standards and for having founded the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Nicolai was born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), and was raised by his father, a composer of lesser rank. The boy began showing talent early on, but became resentful of his father's attempts to benefit from making him a child prodigy. Young Nicolai made repeated failed attempts to run away from home in his teenage years. At 16, however, he lit out on his own as a traveling pianist and, after many difficulties, made his way to Berlin. There he took singing lessons at the Zum Grauen Kloster school and studied music with Goethe's favorite, Zelter.

In 1830, following two years further study at the Royal Institute for Church Music, he began teaching music and singing in concerts, but still struggled in poverty. He had already published his earliest compositions, including his Op. 4 choral work, Preussens Stimme and the Six Lieder, Op. 6. The following year he led a performance of his Symphony in C in Leipzig. Other works appeared as well, and his first concert in Berlin was a success. More stability came in 1833 when he accepted a post as organist at the Prussian embassy in Rome.

He became enamored of Italian culture and spoke of its great influence on him, not only in the realm of music but also in literature and painting. After returning to Vienna to serve as Kapellmeister at the Hoftheater for a year, he returned to Italy in 1838 and began working on his first operas. Enrico II, originally entitled Rosmonda d'Inghilterra (1839), and Il templario (1840) were successes at their premieres, though his subsequent Italian operas, much influenced by Bellini, received lukewarm receptions.

Nicolai returned to Vienna in 1841 and became conductor at the Hofoper, initiating instrumental concerts and thus founding what became the Vienna Philharmonic. For several years he had been interested in the musical masterworks of the past, stretching all the way back to Palestrina, and he deserves some of the credit for the formation of classical music's enduring canon. German arrangements of his some of his early operas, such as Il proscritto, met with success in the mid-1840s. When he was unable to interest the Hofoper in producing his yet-unfinished The Merry Wives of Windsor, he resigned. After a lengthy period of illness, Nicolai traveled to Berlin in 1848 to accept a post as Kapellmeister at the Berlin Opera. That year he completed Merry Wives; it was premiered with success and has held the stage ever since as one of German opera's few comic gems. His success was short-lived, however -- he died on May 11, 1849, after suffering a stroke. ~ Robert Cummings, All Music Guide

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