Альма Малер-Верфель: Жизнь и творчество австрийской композиторки.

Austrian composer (1879–1964)

Alma Mahler Werfel (born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler; 31 August 1879 – 11 December 1964) was an Austrian composer, author, editor, and socialite. Musically active from her early years, she was the composer of nearly fifty songs for voice and piano, and works in other genres as well. 17 songs are known to have survived. At 15, she was mentored by Max Burckhard. She married composer Gustav Mahler, who later began to support her in composing and assisted in preparing some of her works for publication, but he died in 1911. In 1915, Alma married Walter Gropius, and they had a daughter, Manon Gropius. Throughout her marriage to Gropius, Alma engaged in an affair with Franz Werfel. Following her separation from Gropius, Alma and Werfel eventually married. In 1938, after Nazi Germany annexed Austria, Werfel and Alma fled, as it was unsafe for the Jewish Werfel. Eventually the couple settled in Los Angeles. In later years, her salon became part of the artistic scene, first in Vienna, then in Los Angeles and New York.

Alma Maria Schindler was born on 31 August 1879 in Vienna, Austria, (then Austria Hungary) to the famous landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler and his wife Anna Sofie. She was tutored at home and brought up in the Catholic Church. In 1886, Crown Prince Rudolf found interest in Emil Jakob Schindler's paintings and commissioned Schindler to take a trip with his family to the Adriatic coast to produce landscape paintings. In 1892, the family also traveled to the North Sea island of Sylt, where Emil Schindler died. In 1899 they had a daughter together named Maria. Alma teased Zemlinsky about what she thought were his ugly features, saying she could easily have "ten others" to replace him. She also noted that to marry Zemlinsky would mean she would "bring short, degenerate Jew children into the world". With him she had two daughters, Maria Anna (1902–1907), who died of scarlet fever or diphtheria, and Anna (1904–1988), who later became a sculptor. In June 1910, after becoming severely depressed in the wake of Maria's death, Alma began an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius (later head of the Bauhaus), whom she met during a rest at a spa. Following the emotional crisis in their marriage after Gustav's discovery of Alma's affair with Gropius, Gustav began to take a serious interest in Alma's musical compositions, regretting his earlier dismissive attitude and taking promotional actions. Gustav edited some of her songs (Die stille Stadt, In meines Vaters Garten, Laue Sommernacht, Bei dir ist es traut, Ich wandle unter Blumen). As exit visas could not be obtained, Fry arranged for the Werfels to journey on foot across the Pyrenees into Spain to evade the Vichy French border officials. From Spain, Alma and Franz traveled to Portugal. They stayed in Monte Estoril, at the Grande Hotel D'Itália, between 8 September and 4 October 1940. On the same day, they boarded the S. S. Nea Hellas headed for New York City, arriving on 13 October. Eventually they settled in Los Angeles, where Alma continued her role as a hostess, bringing together Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Mann, and many other artists. Werfel, who had enjoyed moderate renown in the US as an author, achieved popular success with his novel The Song of Bernadette, and the science fiction novel Star of the Unborn, published after his death. Werfel, who had experienced serious heart problems throughout his exile, died of a heart attack in California in 1945. Benjamin Britten, considering her to be a "living" link to both Mahler and Alban Berg, dedicated his Nocturne for Tenor and Small Orchestra to her.

Alma Mahler Werfel died 11 December 1964 in New York City. She was buried on 8 February 1965 in the Grinzing Cemetery of Vienna in the same grave as her daughter Manon Gropius and a few steps away from Gustav Mahler. The paintings were “A summer's night on the beach” (1902) by Edvard Munch and three landscapes by her great grandfather Emil Jakob Schindler. Alma Werfel had loaned the paintings to the Oesterreichische Galerie before fleeing the Nazis; Carl Moll, a militant Nazi, gained control of them, selling the Munch to the Oesterreichische Galerie in 1940 and keeping the others until, fearing retribution from the Red Army, he committed suicide. Mahler Werfel filed claims after the war but was only able to recover the Kokoschka portrait. When Austria modified its restrictive restitution laws, the granddaughter revived the claims. Austria initially rejected the claim. After a restitution battle that lasted six decades, Austria finally agreed to restitute the stolen Munch in 2006.

Mahler Werfel's two books on Gustav Mahler influenced studies of the latter. As an articulate, well connected, and influential woman who outlived her first husband by more than 50 years, Mahler Werfel was for decades treated as the main authority on the mature Gustav Mahler's values, character, and day to day behavior, and her various publications quickly became the central source material for Mahler scholars and music lovers alike. As scholars investigated her depiction of Mahler and her relationship with him, her accounts have increasingly been revealed as unreliable, false, and misleading. Nevertheless, the deliberate distortions have had a significant influence on several generations of scholars, interpreters, and music lovers. Countering this stance is that of musicologist Nancy Newman, These songs have been performed and recorded regularly since the 1980s. Orchestral versions of the accompaniments have been produced. Seven songs were orchestrated by David and Colin Matthews (published by Universal Edition), and all 17 songs were orchestrated by Julian Reynolds, and by Jorma Panula.

American satirist Tom Lehrer described her obituary as “the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read”. It prompted him to write the ballad, "Alma", portraying her as "the loveliest girl in Vienna the smartest as well", who became a difficult, temperamental companion to the work absorbed Mahler, Gropius, and Werfel as each in turn came under her "spell". Of her relationship to Mahler he sang: "Their marriage, however, was murdah/ He'd scream to the heavens above/ 'I'm writing Das Lied von der Erde/ and she only vants to make love! In the 1974 film Mahler, by director Ken Russell, Gustav Mahler, while on his last train journey, remembers the important events of his life, such as his relationship with his wife, the deaths of his brother and young daughter, and his trouble with the muses. In the film, Alma was portrayed by Georgina Hale and Gustav by Robert Powell. In 1996, Israeli writer Joshua Sobol and Austrian director Paulus Manker created the polydrama Alma. It played in Vienna for six successive seasons and toured with over 400 performances to Venice, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Petronell, Berlin, Semmering, Jerusalem, and Prague—all places where Mahler Werfel had lived. The show was made into a three part TV miniseries in 1997. Mohammed Fairouz set the words of Alma Mahler in his song cycle Jeder Mensch. It premiered in a coupling with songs of Alma Mahler by mezzo soprano Kate Lindsey in 2011. A treatment of Mahler Werfel's life was presented in the 2001 Bruce Beresford film Bride of the Wind, in which Alma was played by Australian actress Sarah Wynter. Gustav Mahler was portrayed by British actor Jonathan Pryce. Swiss actor Vincent Pérez portrayed Oskar Kokoschka. In 1998, extracts from Alma's diaries were published, covering the years from 1898 to 1902, until the time she married Mahler. In the 2001 novel The Artist's Wife by Max Phillips, she tells her story from the afterlife, focusing on her complicated relationships. In 2010, the German filmmaker Percy Adlon and his son de released their film Mahler auf der Couch (Mahler on the Couch), which relates Gustav Mahler's tormented relationship with his wife, Alma, and his meeting with Sigmund Freud in 1910. In the film's introduction, the directors state, "That it happened is fact. How it happened is fiction." Alma appears in chapter 6, "Montredon" of the 2019 novel, "The Flight Portfolio," by Julie Orringer. She and Werfel are depicted meeting with Varian Fry to discuss the arrangements Fry is trying to make in order to effect their escape from France.