Satiric songster Tom Lehrer has nothing to fear from this jog through the amazing series of husbands & lovers in the life of Alma Schindler (Klimt, Zemlinsky) Mahler (Schrecker, Kokochka) Gropius, Werfel.* Director Bruce Beresford keeps things calm and orderly (too bad), but the screenwriters try to cram every juicy bon mot and scandal into 100" running time. (It’s even less when you subtract the musical fragments.) Worse, they tend to believe/follow Alma’s infamously inaccurate and self-serving published accounts and reworked diary entries. (Decades of Mahler experts have used Alma's memoirs to clear up aspects in Mahler's life: if she says RIGHT they know it's LEFT.) Where’s Ken Russell when you need him?*
LINK: *The names in parentheses are lovers Alma didn’t marry. Lehrer, who died just the other day at 97 (hence this update - 7/29/25), only mentions the three she married in his felicitously droll ballad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL6KgbrGSKQ
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Indeed, Russell made his own MAHLER/’74 bio during his bankable years. It has its fans, but perhaps it’s best just to say he made worse.
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