Felix Mottl

Felix Josef von Mottl (1856–1911) was an Austrian conductor and composer. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant conductors of his day. He composed three operas, of which Agnes Bernauer (Weimar, 1880) was the most successful, as well as a string quartet and numerous songs and other music. His orchestration of Richard Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder is still the most commonly performed version. He was also a teacher, and his pupils included Ernest van Dyck and Wilhelm Petersen.

Career

Mottl was born in Unter Sankt Veit, today Hietzing, Vienna in 1856. His date of birth has been reported variously as 29 July, 24 August, and 29 August. After early voice training at the Löwenburg Konvikt, a training school for the Imperial Court Chapel, he had a successful career at the Vienna Conservatory. He was soon recognized as a gifted conductor of Wagner's music, assisted Hans Richter in preparing the first complete Ring Cycle at Bayreuth in 1876, and himself conducted Tristan und Isolde at Bayreuth in 1886. From 1881 to 1903 he was chief conductor at the Karlsruhe Opera and was widely renowned for his work there, particularly in Wagner, Berlioz and Chabrier, whose operas he championed. He also orchestrated Chabrier's Bourrée fantasque and Trois valses romantiques, and arranged a popular suite of orchestral excerpts from Christoph Willibald Gluck's operas. In later years, as a conductor of Wagner especially, he visited London and New York, guest-conducting the Metropolitan Opera in 1903. He was made a director of the Akademie der Künste at Berlin in 1904.