The Sound of the Suburbs

Otto Nicolai has a street named after him in Berlin’s Komponistenviertel, where he keeps company with Mozart, Beethoven and Gluck; his name appears among the immortals in opera houses and concert halls throughout Europe. It is less common to find his name in concert programmes or on record shelves. Born in 1810 and gone by the age of 39, Nicolai enjoyed a partially successful career in Italy and Vienna before coming to Berlin to take up the position of director of the Prussian Royal Opera (the precursor to today’s Staatsoper). He died only two months after the première of Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor, his only opera written to an original German language libretto, and much of his work fell quickly into the obscurity where it remains today. As with Weber, who died at the same age, we are left to wonder what Nicolai might have achieved…