ALMA WHO? – MAXI BLAHA PLAYS ALMA MAHLER AT THE LEOPOLD MUSEUM

07.10.2021

Unsparing homage to Alma Mahler-Werfel, grande dame and femme fatale of Viennese Modernism

On 15th October, the Viennese actress with Australian roots, Maxi Blaha, will present the play Alma Who? I Won’t Allow Posterity to Look into My Posterior, written for her by the renowned translator of the works of author Elfriede Jelinek, Penny Black, for the first time at the Leopold Museum. The unsparing homage to Alma Mahler-Werfel, grande dame and femme fatale, affords an unusual “museal” stage to one of the central personalities of Viennese Modernism. Following international tours with her stage solos about Bertha von Suttner and Emilie Flöge, Maxi Blaha is now focusing on the artist’s muse Alma Mahler, presenting her in a completely new light. Alma Mahler is brought to life by stage artist Maxi Blaha and musician Georg Buxhofer in a fascinating way that looks far beyond her role as a source of inspiration to famous artists of Modernism, including musicians, painters, architects and writers. Maxi Blaha has chosen historically exceptional, often “historically charged” venues for her previous performances of Alma Who?, including the “Klimt Villa” in Hietzing, built above Klimt’s last studio, the Marble Palace in Bad Ischl, Empress Elizabeth’s tea room, Schloss Orth or the historical farmstead Aichergut in Seewalchen am Attersee. The photographs of Maxi Blaha for her performance at the Leopold Museum were taken at Haus Ast, the villa built by Josef Hoffmann that Carl Moll bought for his stepdaughter Alma Mahler.

“The Leopold Museum, which is currently celebrating its comparatively young 20 years of existence, is home to treasures of Viennese Modernism of immeasurable value. Having emerged 120 years ago in the Austro-Hungarian capital, this movement continues to exert its influence to this day. The Leopold Museum houses the largest Egon Schiele collection and the most comprehensive permanent presentation of works by Oskar Kokoschka – including a 1914/15 wall painting by Kokoschka for Alma Mahler’s house in Breitenstein am Semmering on loan at the museum – as well as one of the richest permanent Gustav Klimt exhibitions. From the opening of the museum’s permanent presentation on the achievements of the Viennese avant-garde, Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism, Alma Mahler has occupied a central place in the exhibition’s ‘Wall of Fame’. I am delighted that Maxi Blaha will now honor Alma Mahler-Werfel with her solo play at the Leopold Museum.” Hans-Peter Wipplinger

The cultural and art scientific context into which the presentation Vienna 1900 is embedded provides an ideal backdrop to Maxi Blaha’s performance. The ticket to the solo play includes a free admission to the Leopold Museum, which can be used at any time.

Alma Mahler polarizes

Alma polarized during her life and continues to do so today. Biographical reference works paint a highly simplified picture of Alma Mahler. The biographer Oliver Hilmes described her as a “delirious widow”. Effusive appellations, such as “prettiest girl in Vienna”, “irresistible nymph” or “beautiful and seductive like no other woman” (Oskar Kokoschka), were countered with insults, including “cesspool” (Marietta Torberg), “monster” (Theodor Adorno) or “glassy-eyed, blubbery old woman on the sofa” (Elias Canetti). Theater berserker Paulus Manker staged Joshua Sobol’s play Alma, which premiered in 1996, as an “unusual and captivating spectacle” (Kurier). Much has been said and written about Alma Mahler. The author Claire Goll summarized: “Anyone married to Alma Mahler has to die”, continuing: “One did not know if she wished to appear as a funeral horse leading a mourning procession or as the new d’Artagnan. Add to this that she was powdered, dolled up, perfumed and completely drunk. This bloated Valkyrie drank like a fish. The wanton wench!”

Alma herself did not mince her words, using not exactly flattering sobriquets for “her” men, such as “womanizer” (Klimt), “maestro” (Mahler), “pygmy” (Zemlinski), “chief wildling” (Kokoschka) and “manchild” (Werfel). She is also known for her anti-Semitic comments, though she was married to two artists of Jewish descent. Following the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in 1938, she fled with Franz Werfel via Prague, Budapest, Italy and France to the United States, where she first lived in California, and later in New York, where she died in 1964, having returned only once to Vienna in 1947. As much as she devoted herself to her partners, she was aware that “the woman by the side of an eminent artist will always come second”. Despite all her disappointments, losses and disillusionment, Alma never lost her inherent, unbridled vitality: “I love my life. And I cannot regret anything.” Arnold Schönberg dedicated a canon to Alma Mahler on her 70th birthday with the lyrics: “Gravitational center of your own solar system, circled by radiant satellites, this is how your life appears to the admirer.”

“To this day, the difficulty of being beautiful, desirable and at the same time successful as an artist requires women to possess a lot of strength, unruliness and humor.” Maxi Blaha

Maxi Blaha at the Leopold Museum

Maxi Blaha gave her first performance at the Leopold Museum back in 2014, when she performed her successful play SOUL OF FIRE about the Austrian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Bertha von Suttner, which premiered at the Austrian Parliament. Commemorating 100 years since the outbreak of World War I, the Leopold Museum was showing the exhibition And Yet There Was Art! Austria 1914-1918 at the time. Now, Blaha takes on the role of Alma Mahler-Werfel (Vienna 1879 – 1964 New York), the grande dame of Viennese Modernism. After Bertha von Suttner and Emilie Flöge, Alma Mahler is the third personality from the era of “Vienna around 1900” to whom Maxi Blaha has dedicated a solo performance. She has further portrayed Elfriede Jelinek and the latter’s idol Ingeborg Bachmann (I Exist Only in Reflection. Bachmann I Jelinek).

“Compelling spirits will keep tempting me, but I will not fall into any abyss or walk into any hell; through all these men’s brain caves, I keep finding my way to freedom. To my freedom, where there are eternal blue skies.” Alma Mahler in a letter to Alban Berg

“They write that I am now a deaf old hag. Have they forgotten that I have always been hard of hearing? Because of the measles! Delirious widow! Her apartment is her stage. Theatrical. They have clearly never been to my parlor, they do not know me in my golden dress. They write that I am fat. Well, the prettiest girl in Vienna has developed an appetite! Do they think that Kokoschka would have painted me if I didn’t have an appetite…”

Alma Mahler-Werfel in Penny Black’s ALMA WHO?

Alma’s partners: Husbands and lovers

Alma Mahler-Werfel was often dubbed the femme fatale of the fin-de-siècle. “The widow of the four arts” (Sigrid Löffler, Die Zeit, 1989) grew up at the heart of bourgeois Viennese society, with its affinity for art and culture. As the daughter of the painter Emil Jakob Schindler and stepdaughter of the artist and co-founder of the Vienna Secession, Carl Moll, she came into contact with the protagonists of the art scene of her time. In her relationships and marriages, she captured the imagination of the main players of Modernism. The painter Gustav Klimt (1862—1918), the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871—1942), the composer, conductor and director of the Vienna State Opera Gustav Mahler (1860—1911), whom she wed in 1902, the architect Walter Gropius (1883—1969), whom she was married to from 1915 to 1920, the enfant terrible of Expressionism Oskar Kokoschka (1886—1980) and the author Franz Werfel (1890-1945), whom she married after years of living together in 1929: They were all fascinated by her or downright devoted to her. Kokoschka saw her as “The Bride of the Wind”, Werfel as “keeper of the fire”. To Arnold Schönberg, she was a great friend who inspired his comment: “I want to live for as long as I may be grateful to you.” She had two children with Mahler, the daughters Maria Anna Mahler (1902—1907) and the sculptor Anna Justina Mahler (1904—1988), with Walter Gropius she had daughter Manon Gropius (1916—1935), and with Franz Werfel son Carl Johannes (1918—1919), who died as an infant.

ALMA WHO? I WON’T ALLOW POSTERITY TO LOOK INTO MY POSTERIOR

Idea and performance: Maxi Blaha - Text: Penny Black – Music: Georg Buxhofer – Direction: Heidelinde Leutgöb – Costumes: Julia Klug – Script: Verena Humer – Make-up: Beate Lentsch-Bayerl – Assistance: Lea Siegl

Performances at the Leopold Museum (in German):

Friday, 15th Oct., 7 pm, Saturday, 16th Oct., 7 pm, Sunday, 17th Oct., 11 am
Friday, 3rd Dec., 7 pm, Saturday, 4th Dec., 7 pm, Sunday, 5th Dec., 2 pm
Friday, 10th Dec., 7 pm, Saturday, 11th Dec., 7 pm, Sunday, 12th Dec., 11 am
Friday, 17th Dec., 7 pm

For information on the play and ticket reservations, please visit: www.leopoldmuseum.org/almawho

For information on Maxi Blaha, please visit:
http://maxiblaha.at/

For questions, please contact:

Leopold Museum Private Foundation
Mag. Klaus Pokorny and Veronika Werkner, BA
Press/Public Relations
0043 1 525 70 - 1507 and 1541
presse@leopoldmuseum.org
www.leopoldmuseum.org

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