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Was Gustav Mahler’s wife, Alma Mahler really a narcissistic and coldly serial seducer of powerful men? Read on to find out…<\/strong><\/p> Alma Mahler\u2019s reputation as a serial, trophy-hunting adultress, alluring and then casting off one artistic giant after another, may be ineradicable but only partly justified. Certainly, in addition to her three husbands \u2013 the composer Gustav Mahle<\/strong>r<\/a>, the architect Walter Gropius and the writer Franz Werfel \u2013 she enjoyed the favours of a number of talented men.<\/p> But too few commentators have tried to see things from Alma\u2019s point of view, rather than portray her as an opportunistic social climber, neglectful of her wifely duties to a series of distinguished creative artists.<\/p> Some of Alma\u2019s character traits, combined with a penchant for anti-Semitic remarks (despite her various Jewish husbands and acquaintances), make her a complex, perplexing figure maybe hard to love yet worthy of our attention.<\/p> But quite apart from the fact that Alma Mahler was a highly intelligent, accomplished pianist<\/a><\/strong> and singer, and a composer of even greater potential, any attempt to understand her has to take into account the social and psychological circumstances of her upbringing. <\/p> Early admirers included the artist Gustav Klimt and the composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky, with whom Alma had composition lessons from 1900. Zemlinsky unsurprisingly fell in love with his attractive 21-year-old pupil and Alma was sufficiently enamoured to consider marrying him.<\/p> But then Mahler spun into her orbit and after suffering agonies of indecision, she cast her lot with him. By the terms of an extraordinary pre-nuptial agreement, on which Mahler insisted and to which Alma consented with extreme reluctance, she gave up composing. Mahler feared that a wife who spent her time being creative would not give him the undivided attention he required.<\/p> Why did Alma agree to Mahler\u2019s ban on her own creativity? And why \u2013 her detractors ask \u2013 if she was so serious about composition, did she not return to it after Mahler\u2019s death in 1911? Alma Mahler, after all, was to live another 53 years \u2013 she died as an American citizen in New York in 1964. In short, she was keen to marry and Mahler\u2019s talent made him worthy of her attention. She felt that marriage would give her empty life a meaning and that it would be a noble act. <\/p>Marriage to Gustav Mahler… and his demand that Alma abandon composing<\/h2>