Otto Nicolai 奥托·尼古拉

德国作曲家。出生于柯尼斯堡。17岁之前一直由他父亲传授给他音乐的知识。后来他到柏林深造。1827年到1830年他在国王教堂音乐学院学习。1833年他在罗马普鲁士公使馆乐队中获得管风琴手一职，之后去到罗马学习音乐，主要学习帕莱斯特里纳的作品和其他古意大利音乐。1837年到维也纳肯特纳托剧院任乐队长，1838年重返罗马并开始歌剧创作。1841年他又回到维也纳重新担任乐队长，同时他还组织爱乐音乐会，并创建了如今著名的维也纳爱乐乐团。1847年他在柏林被任命为宫廷和大教堂合唱团指挥和皇家歌剧院乐队长。尼古拉的名气来主要自于其意大利风格的歌剧，最出名的是“温莎的风流妇人”。除了歌剧他还写了大量歌曲、宗教音乐和世俗合唱曲。

Carl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai(9 June 1810– 11 May 1849) was a German composer, conductor, and one of the founders of theVienna Philharmonic. Nicolai is best known for his operatic version ofShakespeare's comedyThe Merry Wives of WindsorasDie lustigen Weiber von Windsor. In addition to five operas, Nicolai composedlieder, works for orchestra,chorus,ensemble, and solo instruments.

Nicolai, a child prodigy, was born in Königsberg, Prussia. He received his first musical education from his father, Carl Ernst Daniel Nicolai, who was also a composer and musical director. During his childhood his parents divorced, and while still a youth, early in June 1826, Nicolai ran away from his parents' "loveless" home, taking refuge in Stargard with a senior legal official called August Adler who treated the musical prodigy like a son and, when Nikolai was seventeen, sent him to Berlin to study with Carl Friedrich Zelter.

After initial successes in Germany, including his first symphony (1831) and public concerts, he became musician to the Prussian embassy in Rome. When Verdi declined the libretto of Il proscritto by the proprietors of La Scala in Milan, it was offered instead to Nicolai. Later, Nicolai refused a libretto by the same author, and it went to Verdi, whose Nabucco was his first early success. All of Nicolai's operas were originally written in Italian, the sole exception being his last and best known opera, The Merry Wives of Windsor, written in German. At one time he was even more popular in Italy than Verdi.

During the early 1840s, Nicolai established himself as a major figure in the concert life of Vienna. In 1844 he was offered the position, vacated by Felix Mendelssohn, of Kapellmeister at the Berlin Cathedral; but he did not reestablish himself in Berlin until the last year of his life.

On 11 May 1849, two months after the premiere of The Merry Wives of Windsor, and only two days after his appointment as Hofkapellmeister at the Berlin Staatsoper, he collapsed and died from a stroke. On the very same day of his death, he was elected a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts.

Nicolai was portrayed by Hans Nielsen in the 1940 film Falstaff in Vienna.

From：https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto Nicolai