OTTO NICOLAI (1810 – 1849)

Carl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai was a German composer, conductor, founder of

the Vienna Philharmonic best known for his opera, The Merry Wives of
Windsor, its overture in particular. Other works he composed included five
operas, lieder, works for orchestra, chorus, ensemble, and solo instruments,
rarely played. Let’s just take a look at his dates first to see where he is
positioned chronologically in relation to his close contemporaries. Chopin has
the same year of birth and death as Nicolai but I doubt they would have
crossed paths. Most notably he lines up alongside Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
with both dying at much the same age, Nicolai with a stroke and Mendelssohn
with a burst blood vessel. Then there is Schumann (1810-1856); Liszt 1811
who carried his bat till 1886. The one composer you would not immediately
associate with Nicolai is Verdi (1813-1901) and yet, as it happens the two vied
with each to write on the same subject matter.

Nicolai was born in Königsberg in Prussia and was raised by his father, a
composer and musical director of lesser ability. The boy began showing his
talent early on, but became resentful of his father's attempts to benefit from
making him a child prodigy. It was an era when having a musical prodigy in the
family was like winning the lottery. Mozart is the best known example with his
father hoisting him all around Europe. Hummel was another. Schubert had
the talent but it stayed in the family and at school. And Mendelssohn was a
natural. Nicolai made repeated failed attempts to run away from home in his
teens and against the background of his parents breaking up. At 16, he upped
and went on his own as a travelling pianist. He was beset by many difficulties
but he made it to Stargard where he was taken in by August Adler, a senior
legal official, who treated Nicolai like a son. It was he who sent Nikolai, then
aged seventeen to Berlin where he took singing lessons and studied music
with a favourite of Goethe, Carl Friedrich Zelter. Now you may ask “who’s he
when he is at home?”

In 1830, following two years further study at the Royal Institute for Church
Music, he began teaching music and singing in concerts, although he still
struggled with 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, 1831, his Symphony in C was first played 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 and where he studied under Giuseppe Baini. When Verdi
was offered and declined the libretto of Il Proscritto by La Scala in Milan, it was
offered instead to Nicolai. There then follows a good example of Nicolai
choosing the wrong diving board. Nicolai turned down a libretto by the same
librettist, Temistocle Solera, based on the biblical tale of Nebuchadnezzar and
it was offered instead to Verdi, and thereby Nabucco was Verdi’s first early
success. Still, for a time Nicolai was even more popular in Italy than Verdi.
Apart from The Merry Wives of Windsor, written in German and his best known
opera, all of his other operas were originally written in Italian.
He became enamoured of Italian culture and spoke of its great influence on
him, both in the realm of music and also in literature and painting. After
returning to Vienna to serve as Kapellmeister at the Hoftheater for a year in
1838 he then returned to Italy.

His operas were also popularly received in Vienna and during the early 1840s,
Nicolai established himself as a prominent figure in the concert life of the city.
In 1841 he was appointed court conductor in Vienna, going on to found the
Philharmonic Society in 1842, and becoming the Vienna Philharmonic
Orchestra. In 1844 Mendelssohn, resigned the post of Kapellmeister at the
Berlin Cathedral and it was offered instead to Nicolai which he did not take up
until 1849, the last year of his life.

In 1847 he became conductor of the Berlin Opera, where he produced The

Merry Wives in 1849. It remains one of the most popular comic operas of the
19th century. Although a successful composer of his time he now is left with
the reputation of a one horse composer. Listen to the overture and I doubt
anyone would attribute to it the influence of Bellini which Nicolai claimed. To
me it seems to have a full but warm but haunting atmosphere akin to Weber. It
is not long but it does have the longest coda imaginable. It is one of those
works where you can hear it is coming to an end, but turning in on itself to
reprise the sentence and now it is coming to the end, except it goes off at a
tangent and has to work its way back again, and surely this is the end but once
more the reprise, interminably, -- when on earth is it going to end ? – so back
to the build up and at last surely that is it with thump thump thump….and off
he goes again. I reckon that finale section is longer than everything that went
before.

On 11 May 1849, two months after the premiere of The Merry Wives of
Windsor, and only two days after his appointment as Hofkapellmeister at the
Berlin Staatsoper, he collapsed and died from a stroke. On the very same day
of his death, he was elected a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts.

And to another merry wife of Windsor, how about a Royal Command

Performance!