His marriage to the journalist Maria Ziegler produced two daughters: Ursula von Zallinger, long-time Secretary General of Prix Jeunesse [fr], and Monika Fürstin Rohan, stage and costume designer.
After reluctantly abandoning his law studies in Innsbruck, Zallinger began his musical education as a private student of piano and conducting at the Mozarteum University Salzburg.
In the spring of 1944, Zallinger became generalmusic director of the Duisburg Opera, which by then had already been relocated to Prague, a post he was unable to take up fully due to time constraints.
[2] In the immediate post-war period, the rhythm of changes of station accelerated until the stabilitas loci [de] returned for the second time to Munich.
[3] On 25 June 1973, he conducted Le nozze di Figaro for the last time at the Munich National Theatre, thus not only retiring from the Bavarian State Opera, of which he had been a member for 29 years, but also ending his conducting career after more than 50 years and retiring to Salzburg.
[6] His repertoire ranged from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea to Orff Prometheus and the American composer John Alden Carpenter, whose ballet music he recorded with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.
He was the "calming influence in the madhouse of the opera business" (Karl Schumann, important music critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung) and the "indispensable one" with the qualities of "settled, unpretentious, available at any hour".