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Alfred Maria Willner was born and died in Vienna. He began composing mostly music for the piano and eventually made a career writing librettos for ballets, operas and operettas. One of his early operettas was Johann Strauss II’s Die Göttin der Vernunft, a commission that Strauss regretted. Strauss was forced to complete the commission only by the threat of a lawsuit and declined to attend a performance. Later the libretto and score were legally separated, and Willner revised the libretto for Franz Lehár as Der Graf von Luxemburg.

Willner's first big success was his libretto for Leo Fall’s Die Dollarprinzessin, after which he became a much sought-after operetta librettist. He wrote several successful librettos for Lehár operettas, particularly in collaboration with Heinz Reichert . The two also collaborated on highly successful adaptations of music by Schubert (such as Das Dreimäderlhaus) and by Johann Strauss father and son (such as Walzer aus Wien). In addition, Willner and Reichert were the contracted librettists for Puccini's opera La rondine which was later adapted by Giuseppe Adami.