Otto Nicolai |

Otto Nicolai

Of the five operas by Nicolai, a contemporary of Schumann and Mendelssohn, only one is known, The Merry Wives of Windsor, which was very popular for half a century – until the end of the XNUMXth century, before the appearance of Verdi’s Falstaff, which used the plot of the same comedy by Shakespeare.

Otto Nicolai, who was born on June 9, 1810 in the capital of East Prussia, Königsberg, lived a short but active life. The father, a little-known composer, tried to realize his ambitious plans and make a child prodigy out of a gifted boy. The tormenting lessons prompted Otto to make several attempts to escape from his father’s house, which finally succeeded when the teenager was sixteen years old. Since 1827 he has been living in Berlin, studying singing, playing the organ and composition with the famous composer, head of the Singing Chapel K. F. Zelter. B. Klein was his other composition teacher in 1828-1830. As a member of the Choir Choir Nicolai in 1829 not only participated in the famous performance of Bach’s Passion according to Matthew conducted by Mendelssohn, but also sang the role of Jesus.

The following year, Nicolai’s first work was printed. After completing his studies, he gets a job as organist of the Prussian embassy in Rome and leaves Berlin. In Rome, he studied the works of the old Italian masters, especially Palestrina, continued his composition studies with G. Baini (1835) and gained fame in the capital of Italy as a pianist and piano teacher. In 1835, he wrote music for the death of Bellini, and the next – for the death of the famous singer Maria Malibran.

Almost a ten-year stay in Italy was briefly interrupted by work as a conductor and singing teacher at the Vienna Court Opera (1837–1838). Returning to Italy, Nicolai set to work on operas to Italian librettos (one of them was originally intended for Verdi), which reveals the undoubted influence of the most popular composers of that time – Bellini and Donizetti. For three years (1839–1841), all 4 operas by Nicolai were staged in various cities of Italy, and The Templar, based on Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, has been popular for at least a decade: it has been staged in Naples, Vienna and Berlin, Barcelona and Lisbon, Budapest and Bucharest, Petersburg and Copenhagen, Mexico City and Buenos Aires.

Nicolai spends the 1840s in Vienna. He is staging a new version of one of his Italian operas translated into German. In addition to conducting activities in the Court Chapel, Nicolai is also gaining fame as an organizer of philharmonic concerts, in which, under his leadership, in particular, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is performed. In 1848 he moved to Berlin, worked as a conductor of the Court Opera and the Dome Cathedral. On March 9, 1849, the composer conducts the premiere of his best opera, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Two months later, on May 11, 1849, Nicolai dies in Berlin.

A. Koenigsberg