About the work
Otto Nicolai's comic-fantastical opera in three acts was begun while he was Kapellmeister at Vienna's Kärntnertortheater and completed only after his move to Berlin. Salomon Hermann Mosenthal's libretto follows Shakespeare's comedy "The Merry Wives of Windsor". Nicolai himself conducted the premiere on 9 March 1849 at Berlin's Königliches Opernhaus.
Plot
The impoverished country squire Sir John Falstaff courts two Windsor housewives, Mistress Fluth and Mistress Reich, at once and purely for their money. When the two friends compare his identical love letters, they decide to humiliate him in turn – with a laundry basket, a disguise as an old woman, and finally a nighttime mix-up in Windsor Great Park. Alongside this, several suitors vie for the hand of Mistress Reich's daughter Anna.
Cultural significance
The premiere flopped and was withdrawn after only four performances; only after Nicolai's death two months later did the opera establish itself, and it now ranks among the most performed German comic operas. Its overture remains a concert staple, including at the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts – the orchestra whose forerunner Nicolai himself had helped found in Vienna in 1842.