Wilhelm Kienzl

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Wilhelm Kienzl (17 January 1857 – 19 October 1941) was an Austrian opera composer.

He was born in the small, picturesque upper Austrian town of Waizenkirchen. His family moved to the Styrian capital of Graz not long after. It was there that he began studies on the piano and later in composition. Subsequently he was sent to the music conservatory at Prague University. There his teacher, Josef Krejci who was also the director of the conservatory, took him to Bayreuth to hear the first performance of Wagner's Ring Cycle. It made a lasting impression on Kienzl and though he subsequently fell out with "The Wagnerites", he never lost his love for Wagner's music. The exposure to Wagner resulted in Kienzl eventually studying with Liszt at the Leipzig Conservatory before completing doctoral studies at the University of Vienna. Kienzl's first love was opera and then vocal music and it was in these two genres that he made his name. Several of his operas, such as Der Evangelimann, Der Kuhreigen, Urvasi and Heilmar der Naar, became famous and were widely performed throughout the German-speaking world. He was also considered, along with Hugo Wolf, one of the finest composers of Lieder (art songs) since Schubert. His most famous work, Der Evangelimann, is a folk opera that has been compared to Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel.

Despite the fact that opera came first in his life, as it did for Mozart, Kienzl (again like Mozart) by no means ignored chamber music. He wrote three string quartets and a piano trio.