Alfred Maria Willner

An Austrian librettist, and one of the leading names of the Viennese operetta's silver age. He took a doctorate in law at Vienna and worked as a journalist and composer before turning to libretti, writing Die Göttin der Vernunft for Johann Strauss the younger, who resented the commission and refused to attend it. Willner later reworked that text for Lehár as Der Graf von Luxemburg. With Heinz Reichert he wrote Das Dreimäderlhaus and a run of Lehár operettas, and the two were the contracted librettists for the Viennese operetta Puccini was engaged to write, which became La rondine.