FOR THE LOVE OF ALMA MAHLER
Sandra Eldridge & Patrick Dickson
Patrick Dickson
FOR THE LOVE OF ALMA MAHLER
A play about composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma. Alma’s name has been linked romantically with many famous men both during and after her marriage to Mahler, among them Gustav Klimt and architect Walter Gropius –of the Bauhaus. Alma reluctantly came to realise that a musical career of her own would not be possible and threw herself into the role of muse. She believed her devotion to her husband’s music was a commitment to history.
Musical Director Ross Edwards arranged the Mahler music and composed piano music based on the early compositions of Alma Mahler. Well known as an Australian composer Edwards' oboe concerto was performed in New York in February 2005 with the New York Philharmonic at the Lincoln Centre.
CAST 4 men • 4 women • 1 diva • 8 musicians
SETTING 1890s–1911 • Vienna
“This production has amazing grace, its a love story and because of Alma, Mahler’s music did go on and on…”
“Wendy Beckett, writer–director of the play MAHLER is: a playwrights’ director and a director’s playwright”
Patrick Dickson & Sandra Eldridge
“Wendy Beckett’s Mahler played by Patrick Dickson is intelligent and eminently watchable; it provides a believable rendering of Mahler’s tortured creativity…She gives us a deep and memorable focus on Alma Mahler’s life, as well as… a segue between decaying classical romanticism and early orchestral modernism”
Patrick Dickson & Musicians
KIm Vercoe & Sandra Eldridge
Sandra Eldridge & Patrick Dickson