Felix Mottl

Felix Josef von Mottl (between 29 July/29 August 1856 – 2 July 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, 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 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 Amsterdam, London and New York, guest-conducting the Metropolitan Opera in 1903. He was made a director of the Academy of Arts, Berlin in