Carl Zeller was a lawyer by profession and a government official, an amateur musician who created one of the most popular operettas of the late nineteenth century, Der Vogelhandler (The Bird Seller). The son of a physician, Zeller had studied for a time at the Choir School in the Court Chapel in Vienna, and learned harmony and counterpoint before the legal profession became the focus of his education. Zeller never entirely gave up music, even as he moved into ever more important government posts, culminating with his appointments as a Privy Councilor and head of a department within the Ministry of Information. He wrote a comic opera, Jaconde, which was premiered when Zeller was 26 years old, and a pair of operettas, Carbonari and Vagabund, which were no more than modestly popular, during the following decade. On January 10, 1891, Der Vogelhandler was premiered at the Theatre an der Wien in Vienna and became an overnight success, running for 50 consecutive performances, yielding a half-dozen hit songs and reinvigorating the operetta genre just at a point when its best years seemed past.

This work was to be Zeller's last and greatest success. His later life was blighted by accusations of scandal and incompetence that drove him into premature retirement with a modest pension, and he never wrote anything else remotely as popular. Der Vogelhandler has endured as one of most popular operettas from the later half of Vienna's golden age, and has kept Zeller's name alive for 100 years. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi