The Long LineThe Long Line Explore Nine Centuries of Music Carl Zeller

Carl Zeller

Austrian lawyer and composer

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.

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 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career at the ministry and led to prison and public disgrace in the mid-1890s (although his prison sentence was later repealed).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.

Read more about this composer on Wikipedia.

Works

The Long LineThe Long Line
  • Das Lied vom Ahnl
  • Der Kellermeister
  • Der Kellermeister: „Als ich trank den ersten Wein” / „Lass dir Zeit”
  • Der Kellermeister: „Ich bin geboren in dem Jahr, als der Komet am Himmel war”
  • Der Obersteiger
  • Der Obersteiger: Akt I
  • Der Obersteiger: Akt II
  • Der Obersteiger: Akt II. "Sei nicht bös" (Martin)
  • Der Obersteiger: Akt III
  • Der Obersteiger: “Don't Be Cross” (Sei nicht bös')
  • Der Vogelhändler
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt I
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt I. "Ich bin die Christel von der Post" (Christel)
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt I. “Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol” (Kurfürstin, Adam)
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt I. „Grüss euch Gott” (Adam, Chor)
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt II
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt II. "Ich bin der Prodekan" (Süffle, Würmchen)
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt II. „Wie mein Ahn’l zwanzig Jahr” (Adam)
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt III
  • Der Vogelhändler: Akt III. “Als geblüht der Kirschenbaum” (Kurfürstin)
  • Der Vogelhändler: Grand Fantasia
  • Der Vogelhändler: „Fröhlich Pfalz, Gott erhalt’s”
  • Der Vogelhändler: „Mir scheint, ich kenn dich, spröde Fee”
  • Don’t Be Cross
  • Grubenlichter
  • Grüß euch Gott
  • Lippizaner Kaiserin (after "Der Vogelhändler")
  • Roses from Tyrol