Born in Cronenberg, now part of Wuppertal,[1] Zanotelli learned to play the violin and piano as a child.
At the age of 24, he became Kapellmeister in Düsseldorf, after which he moved to the Oper Bonn and Hamburgische Staatsoper.
Zanotelli conducted a recording of excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni, sung in German by a cast including Hermann Prey, Elisabeth Grümmer and Fritz Wunderlich.
4 in G major (Sapphire, Intercord Klassische Diskothek INT 120.933) with pianist Ernst Gröschel and the Bamberger Symphoniker.
Producer Alfred Scholz published countless sound recordings with an orchestra he called the "Süddeutsche Philharmonie", many of them with fictitious conductor names, but also those with the name of conductor Zanotelli.