Nicolai, (Carl) Otto (Ehrenfried) (1810-1849)

German composer and conductor. In 1847 he was appointed director of the cathedral choir and the Court Opera in Berlin, where he died of a stroke, two months after the production of his Merry Wives of Windsor; after initial rejection, this soon became his most popular opera, and is still often heard in Germany.

He studied the piano as a child, but was so unhappy at home that in 1826 he ran away and was sent to Berlin by a patron the following year for study under Carl Zelter and Bernhard Klein. In 1833 another patron sent him to Rome as organist in the Prussian Embassy chapel, and there he studied under Giuseppe Baini. He returned there after a year at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna 1837-38. He became court kapellmeister in Vienna in 1841 and founded the Philharmonic concerts there in 1842.

Works Opera Enrico II (later Rosmonda d'Inghilterra, 1839), Il templario (1840), Odoardo e Gildippe, Il proscritto (later Die Heimkehr des Verbannten, 1841), Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (after Shakespeare, 1849).

Church music and other Mass for Frederick William IV of Prussia, Requiem, Te Deum; Symphonic Festival Overture on ‘Ein' feste Burg’ for the jubilee of Königsberg University.