Carl Zeller
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Carl Adam Johann Nepomuk Zeller (19 June 1842 – 17 August 1898) was an Austrian composer of operettas.
He was born in Sankt Peter in der Au, the only child of physician Johann Zeller and Maria Anna Elizabeth. Zeller's father died before his first birthday, and his mother remarried Ernest Friedinger. In 1875, he married Anna Maria Schwetz.
Zeller sang in the Vienna Boys' Choir before studying law at the University of Vienna (graduating in 1869) and composition with Simon Sechter. He worked as a civil servant at the Imperial Ministry of Education while composing songs ('God Greets You All' and 'Give Yourself Roses in Tyrol'), choral works and a number of operettas, of which the best-known is Der Vogelhändler. All of his libretti were by (or co-written by) Moritz West, often together with Ludwig Held.
Legal troubles, including a perjury conviction, ended Zeller's career at the ministry and led to prison and public disgrace in the mid 1890s. After an injury in 1895 from falling on the ice, he spent his last years physically and then mentally ill. He died of pneumonia in Baden bei Wien at the age of 56.
[edit] Operettas
- Joconde (1876)
- Die Fornarina (1878)
- Capitän Nicoll, oder Die Carbonari (1880)
- Der Vagabund (1886)
- Der Vogelhändler (The Bird Seller) (1891)
- Der Obersteiger (The Foreman) (1894)
- Der Kellermeister (1901; completed by Johannes Brandt)
