Woman, The Eternal Temptation
by Christine Dössel/Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

Alma a Venezia: in its seventh year, Paulus Manker is showing his simultaneous theatre on the life of Alma Mahler-Werfel in Venice - and we still cannot see enough

Death in Venice. Night-time. A gondola, decorated with torches, stops in front of the Palazzo Zenobio by the Rio dei Carmini. From the windows of the Palace drifts majestic music: the Funeral March from Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Two gondoliers solemnly take delivery of a coffin - the coffin of Gustav Mahler - delicately heave it into the boat, then glide away into the darkness. Several tourists on the other side of the bridge rush to take photos, and there is a flurry of flashlights, for death in Venice is a much sought-after motif. Who cares that it is a scene from a play? After all, the whole of Venice is a stage, as if designed to tell of love and death and the depths of desire. Indeed it is the ideal place for that femme fatale to whom this evening of theatre is dedicated: Alma Mahler, née Schindler, later Gropius, later Werfel - lover and life partner of one of the leading artists of her day. Muse, mistress and termagant. She claimed to provide a "leg-up" - for the best in every man: "Every genius is simply one more perfect feather for my nest."

The widow of the four arts
She was a sex goddess, a robber of semen, who allegedly claimed that "nothing tastes as good as the sperm of a genius". Her effect on artists appears to have been akin to that of a drug. Composer Gustav Mahler, husband number one, was twenty years older than she and as if addicted to her. What he was unable to give her in bed, she obtained from architect Walter Gropius, husband number two following Mahler's death, and "the only one who was my racial equal". Yet Alma was not faithful to him either. In 1912, she met painter Oskar Kokoschka, and began with him a passionate affair which he immortalized in his painting Windsbraut. "He was like the Biblical Flood," noted Alma. When, after three years, she no longer wished to see him, Kokoschka had a life-size doll made of Alma, an exact image of his beloved down to the most intimate details.

At 50, Alma, whom Kokoschka described as a "wild creature", married for a third time; her new husband was Jewish writer Franz Werfel, who perceived in his saviour a goddess. Indeed, as early as 1918, while still married to Gropius, Alma became pregnant by him. Werfel's passion at the time was so ardent that he expelled the child from her womb in a pool of blood; a few months later, the child was dead.

Alma, eternally tempting woman, was known as the "widow of the four arts". Posthumously, she has even conquered a fifth art: theatre. For Viennese actor and director Paulus Manker - himself, like Kokoschka, notorious as an angry young man and lothario - has fallen victim to the voracious Alma. And he has created a monument to her which is indeed entirely worthy of his predecessors: the theatrical spectacle Alma - A Show Biz ans Ende, after a text by Israeli author Joshua Sobol - a journey through Alma's life, staged as a "polydrama", with various plot elements running in parallel. The play, first performed in 1996 at the Wiener Festwochen and made into a film by Paulus Manker in 1999, has long since been a cult among connoisseurs. There are fans who have seen the performance a dozen times; indeed the biggest "Almaniac" boasts a total of 73 performances. Six summers long, the Sanatorium Purkersdorf outside Vienna served as a venue for the show, an empty Jugendstil building whose rooms Manker's ensemble had fitted out in turn-of-the-century style. One hundred and forty performances took place there, all of them sell-outs, and in the process 23,044 candles and 2,736 torches were burnt, and at the funeral banquet in honour of Gustav Mahler - the menu is part of the performance - the audience was treated to a vast quantity of baked chicken wings, boiled fillet of beef and apple strudel, as well as 3,762 bottles of wine.

Now in its seventh year, the production has found itself looking for a new venue, and has set off on tour. The first stop is Venice, the city in which the young Alma once received her first kiss from Gustav Klimt, and the place where she later travelled with Oskar Kokoschka. In 1922, she bought a house there with Franz Werfel, which she named Casa Alma. It was also in Venice that, in 1934, her daughter Manon, born of her marriage with Walter Gropius, fell ill. The girl, who was considered a stunning beauty, died of polio just one year later, at the age of thirteen. Alban Berg composed his Violin Concerto in her honour, dedicating it to "the memory of an angel"; and naturally, besides Mahler's symphonies, the audience hear this work too in Manker's production as they trace the path of Alma's life.

Alma a Venezia : on the Italian tour, English is the main language spoken, though the scenes with Werfel (Nikolaus Paryla) are in Italian. The beautiful Palazzo Zenobio on the Fondamente del Soccorso has been rented for the show, a building dating from the late 17th century. As in Purkersdorf, here too, all interior and exterior spaces are used for the performance, from the splendid hall of mirrors on the first floor to the rooms leading into the courtyard and the neighbouring garden. Once again, Georg Resetschnig has decorated the rooms in the style of the period, faithful down to the smallest detail, and using exquisite furniture, old carpets and paintings, music manuscripts, documents and letters. There is a luxurious bathing hall and a steaming kitchen, an Alma memorial and an Italian cafe. Everywhere are chandeliers, burning candles, and all the props have been brought over from Vienna - a process of "Almafication".

Yet still we have this feeling of not seeing enough. Simultaneous theatre offers both want and abundance; who should we follow? Where should we go first? With Alma number two, into the bedroom to find Gropius (Xaver Hutter), where we are voyeurs to intimacies, or perhaps better to go down into the kitchen, where Alma number three is haring about with Gustav Mahler (Helmut Berger)? Outside, on the canal, Werfel flees to Palestine; up in the Kafka Room, the wild Kokoschka (Paulus Manker in a showcase role) falls passionately upon his beloved. Four Almas are at our disposal, the aged diva (Milena Vukotic) who, having returned from the dead, invites all those present to a party, and her three younger incarnations, played by Wiebke Frost, Nicole Ansari-Cox and Lea Mornar. As we follow them, we are able to assemble the pieces of Alma's biography bit by bit - yet we never fully grasp the whole.

Eavesdropping on a life
"Alma" - the act of eavesdropping on a love life. It is astonishing how the production repeatedly succeeds in creating not just atmosphere but also extremely intimate moments - although, or indeed because, the audience is right up close to the performers, literally coming into bodily contact with them on the sofas and armchairs of the salons. "Alma" is more than a theatre spectacle, it is a piece of theatrical fascination. A complete work of art - ingenious, sensual and full of passion. Even in its proverbially ominous seventh year, it has lost nothing of its power.

Next year, the production goes to New York, where Alma spent the final years of her life. There she is said to have held court like a fallen queen. And indeed this is what she was: the queen among artists' muses.

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