Overture to Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor)

Program notes

About the Work

Otto Nicolai is remembered today for two things: he founded the Philharmonic Concerts in Vienna in 1842, the origin of the Vienna Philharmonic, and he wrote Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor), the comic opera whose overture opens tonight’s programme.

Nicolai had made his name in Italy with a series of Italian operas before settling in Vienna, and the Shakespeare opera, composed mostly in 1845 and 1846, was his first major work in German. The libretto, by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal, follows Shakespeare’s plot: two married women, Frau Fluth and Frau Reich, discover that the vain and penniless Falstaff has sent them identical love letters, and set about humiliating him, first by tipping him into a ditch in a laundry basket and finally at a midnight masquerade in Windsor Forest, where he is tormented by guests disguised as spirits and elves. Around this runs the love story of Anna Reich and the young Fenton, who marry in secret while her parents each try to marry her off to someone else.

The work proved hard to place. The Vienna Court Opera declined to give the first performance, a disappointment that was one of the main reasons Nicolai left the city in 1847. The opera was finally premiered in Berlin on 9 March 1849, with Nicolai conducting, but he died there only a short time later, in May, having just been appointed court music director. Its lasting popularity came after his death, above all in Germany and Austria, where it has remained in the repertoire. The overture became a concert favourite in its own right.

Musically the opera follows the German Singspiel tradition, with musical numbers joined by spoken dialogue, and it combines two strands of German opera of the time: the romantic, supernatural colouring of Weber in the moonlit forest scenes, and the comic style of Albert Lortzing in the scenes with Falstaff and the jealous husbands.

What to Listen For

The overture opens quietly, with a slow, lyrical introduction in the strings that sets a romantic, nocturnal mood before the comedy begins. The main Allegro is quick, light and full of bustle, with themes from the opera tossed between strings and woodwind. Nicolai, an experienced conductor, writes with great clarity; listen for the crisp dialogue between sections of the orchestra and for the brilliant, high-spirited coda.