Heinz Reichert

An Austrian librettist, born Heinrich Blumenreich, who wrote some of the most successful operettas of the Viennese silver age. He worked first with Fritz Grünbaum, then in a long partnership with Alfred Maria Willner on Das Dreimäderlhaus, fitted to Schubert's music, and on operettas for Lehár. With Willner he wrote Die Schwalbe, the Viennese text Puccini was contracted to set, which Giuseppe Adami reworked into La rondine. Forced out of Austria in 1938, he spent his last years in Hollywood and died there.