Carl Adam Johann Nepomuk Zeller (19 June 1842 – 17 August 1898) was an Austrian composer of operettas.

Zeller 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, after which his mother remarried Ernest Friedinger. In 1875, Zeller married Anna Maria Schwetz.

Carl Zeller

Zeller had a fine soprano voice, and sang in the Vienna Boys' Choir before studying and composition in the University of Vienna. He worked as a civil servant at the Imperial Ministry of Education while composing choral works and a number of operettas, the best-known of which is Der Vogelhändler. All of his librettos were written (or co-written) by , often together with .

Carl Zeller

Legal troubles, including a perjury conviction, ended Zeller's career at the ministry and led to prison and public disgrace in the mid-1890s (although his prison sentence was later repealed). After an injury in 1895 from falling on the ice, he spent his last years physically and then mentally ill. Zeller died of pneumonia in Baden bei Wien at the age of 56.

Carl Zeller

Operettas

Joconde (1876) Die Fornarina (1878) Capitän Nicoll, oder Die Carbonari (1880) Der Vagabund (1886) Der Vogelhändler (The Bird Seller) (1891) The Mine Foreman (Der Obersteiger) (1894) ''Der Kellermeister (1901; completed by Johannes Brandl)

External links

Biography of Zeller

Zeller at the Johann Strauss Society of Great Britain

List of Zeller's stage works

Brief profile of Zeller

More complete German Wikipedia entry

References

1842 births

1898 deaths

Composers from Vienna

Austrian Romantic composers

Austrian opera composers

Male opera composers

19th-century classical composers

Austrian male classical composers

Deaths from pneumonia in Austria

19th-century male musicians

19th-century musicians