Literature and music: Delia Mayer reads Alma Mahler. Tonhalle Zurich 2026.

Delia Mayer: Reading.

Theresa Pilsl: Soprano.

Hendrik Heilmann: Piano.

Laurenz Lütteken: Introduction.

Gustav Mahler, Alma Mahler-Werfel, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Alban Berg a.o., Songs for Soprano and Piano.

Alma Mahler is as much a legend as a muse as she is a man-devouring monster. But behind this superficial view, an independent artist and composer is revealed, which led to tensions in her life with Gustav Mahler, not least because of her anti-Semitism. Even before the wedding, she noted: "He thinks nothing of my art - a lot of his - and I think nothing of his art and a lot of mine. That's the way it is!" This makes the few published compositions that she created against his will all the more significant. The songs stand out among them. Mahler researcher Franz Willnauer unearths treasures from the archive of the eventful life alongside Gustav Mahler, but also the composer Alexander Zemlinsky, the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius, the painter and graphic artist Oskar Kokoschka, who had a doll made according to her measurements after the separation, and the writer Franz Werfel. Five men like five staves on which she composed her life.

Sunday May 22, 2026, 11:15 am