Otto Nicolai

Carl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai was a German composer, conductor, and one of the founders of the Vienna Philharmonic. Nicolai is best known for his operatic version of Shakespeare’s comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor as Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor. In addition to five operas, Nicolai composed lieder, works for orchestra, chorus, ensemble, and solo instruments.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Otto Nicolai.

From the period sources

Otto Nicolai was a notable figure in musical education, counting among his pupils such talents as the German soprano Mathilde de Castrone Marchesi, as recorded in Brown’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1886). He also taught Willem De Haan, who later became a Hofkapellmeister in Darmstadt, according to A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1900). Nicolai himself received instruction from Joseph Benjamin Heinrich Birnbach, a pianist and teacher who founded a musical institute in Berlin, as noted in A Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1905).