- Person
- Gustav Mahler
- Lived
- 1860–1911
- Field
- Music
- From
- Austrian
The story
Gustav Mahler grew up in Bohemia, a German-speaking Jew in a land shared by Czechs and Germans, and he later described a lifelong sense of being an outsider. As a young conductor at the German theatre in Prague in 1885 and 1886 he saw the rise of the Czech national revival at first hand, as the new Czech National Theatre drew audiences away from the German house. In Hamburg in the 1890s he conducted works by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana.
Mahler reached the Vienna Court Opera in 1897, in a city whose mayor, Karl Lueger, was openly antisemitic and where German nationalist feeling ran high. To win the post he had converted to Catholicism, and he made his first mark with acclaimed performances of Wagner and Mozart and Vienna's first uncut Ring cycle.
When he was formally appointed director on 8 October 1897, his first production in the new role was Smetana's Dalibor. First performed in Prague in 1868, this Czech nationalist opera tells the story of a 15th-century knight imprisoned after an uprising in support of the oppressed, who sings a famous "Song to Freedom" in his cell. Mahler presented it with a reworked finale in which Dalibor survives. The production caused anger among extreme Viennese German nationalists, who accused Mahler of fraternising with the anti-dynastic, inferior Czech nation.
Mahler went ahead regardless. Over his decade in Vienna he introduced 33 new operas and mounted 55 new or completely revamped productions, drawing on composers from across Europe, including Tchaikovsky. In New York he conducted Smetana's The Bartered Bride at the Metropolitan Opera in February 1909, a much-praised performance.
In an empire increasingly divided by nationalism, Mahler's choice of a Czech national opera for his opening production showed a belief that great art belonged to every people, not to one nation alone.
Why it matters
Mahler helped bring Czech opera to wider audiences at a time when nationalism was pitting the peoples of the empire against one another.
About Gustav Mahler
Late-Romantic composer and conductor; bridged the 19th-century symphonic tradition and modernism.
More about Gustav Mahler
- Gustav Mahler championed the young Arnold SchoenbergAlthough he did not write atonal music himself, Gustav Mahler fiercely defended the young Arnold Schoenberg, whose circle became the Second Viennese School.
- Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony premiered in triumphOn 12 September 1910 Gustav Mahler conducted the premiere of his choral Eighth Symphony in Munich, the greatest success of his lifetime as a composer.
- Gustav Mahler's music outlived a Nazi banBanned as degenerate by the Nazis, Gustav Mahler's symphonies were revived after the war and became among the most frequently performed and recorded in the world.
- Gustav Mahler raised the Vienna Opera to new heightsAs director of the Vienna Court Opera from 1897 to 1907, Gustav Mahler staged 33 new operas and transformed performance standards, and his symphonies now rank among the most performed.
Sources
- Gustav Mahler Wikipedia
- Dalibor (opera) Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.