Ishtar Bakhtali Hosts: Alma Mahler, de Windbruid

Synopsis Alma Mahler, the Wind Bride.

She is wildly attractive, beautiful, quick-witted, well-read, an art connoisseur and well on her way to becoming the first woman to compose a really good opera. When her fiancé, Gustav Mahler, demands that she give up her profession, a bomb explodes. Nevertheless, to the frustration of those close to her, she decides from then on to use her talent for that of her men, all brilliant artists. In this new role of manager, mother, muse, she is just as successful, although drink, manipulation and sex take their toll.

Alma Mahler (1879-1964) outlived three of her four children and two world wars. As the wife of a Jewish man, she fled anti-Semitism. Her work was labeled 'Entartete Kunst'. The sixteen songs that survive are full of passion, capriciousness and beauty, as intense, painful, colorful and grand as Alma's life.

Eight of these songs form the common thread of the performance in which Alma (Ellen Pieterse) and her alter ego (Monique van de Ven) are theatrically and musically involved in a thrilling field of tension.