Biography
Otto Nicolai was born on 9 June 1810 in Königsberg and, at sixteen, fled his strict father for Berlin in 1826, where he studied church music with Carl Friedrich Zelter among others. In 1833 he went to Rome as organist of the German Protestant congregation and turned there to Italian opera. From 1841 he served as Kapellmeister of the Vienna court opera and in 1842 founded, with the house orchestra, the philharmonic concerts from which the Vienna Philharmonic emerged. In 1847 he moved to Berlin as Kapellmeister of the Royal Theatre, where shortly before his death he composed his best-known opera, "The Merry Wives of Windsor". Nicolai died on 11 May 1849 in Berlin, only two months after its premiere.
On Stagelog
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