Gustav Mahler must have smelled a fuse when Alexander Zemlinsky, who would have turned one hundred and fifty years old today, presented him with his latest operatic material: an older man who, with a younger man (who is also his son) for the favor of a coquettish, with her charms playing woman argues. Zemlinsky is eleven years younger than Mahler, the Vienna court opera director, and he is his predecessor when it comes to his relationship with Alma Schindler. For a short time their composition teacher, Zemlinsky was seized with a violent passion for notorious beauty, his feelings, as Alma Schindler's diaries show, did not go unrequited (which later did not prevent her from calling Zemlinsky a "hideous gnome"). Had Zemlinsky, with a tendency towards shyness and the "game of hide and seek",As the musicologist and Zemlinsky expert Antony Beaumont characterizes the composer, pursuing his goal more resolutely, the “most beautiful girl in Vienna” might have become an Alma Zemlinsky. But that's how Gustav Mahler came, married Alma a few weeks after the first meeting, and shortly afterwards Zemlinsky came up with his plan for the opera “Malva”. Mahler, who two years earlier had premiered Zemlinsky's “Once Upon a Time” at his house, turned it down.who had premiered Zemlinsky's “Once Upon a Time” at his house two years earlier, declined.who had premiered Zemlinsky's “Once Upon a Time” at his house two years earlier, declined.
Ten years later, Zemlinsky took up the subject after a story by Maxim Gorky. With his brother-in-law and at times close friend Arnold Schönberg, he spent a few summer weeks in Karlshagen on Usedom, soon in a dispute, where Schönberg was simultaneously writing on “Pierrot lunaire”. The environment stimulated Zemlinsky's creative powers. How much can now be experienced in Prague, where a three-day festival was held at the State Opera on Zemlinsky's birthday and fragments from “Malva” were also premiered. From 1911 to 1927 Zemlinsky was music director of the State Opera, the then "New German Theater". The house was once built as a response by the German-speaking population to the construction of the shiny gold Czech National Theater.Zemlinsky performed the music of his time in musically rather conservative Prague, put Schönberg, Berg, Pfitzner and Mahler on the program and shone as an opera conductor with a special appreciation for the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Igor Stravinsky remembered one of the “most satisfying” Mozart performances that he had experienced in Prague under Zemlinsky, the conductor Josef Krips praised the subtle orchestral sound that made it possible for the performers to sing in an unforced manner.which enabled the actors to sing unforced on stage.which enabled the actors to sing unforced on stage.