As music director of the Vienna State Opera and then (briefly) of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Gustav Mahler was steeped in the form. Despite this, he never wrote an opera. The closest Mahler came is probably the hour-long finale of the Eighth Symphony, which sets the final scene from Part Two of Goethe’s “Faust.” The Vienna State Opera dedicated its 2022-23 season to Mahler to mark 125 years since his appointment. It opened, in October 2022, with Calixto Bieito’s “Von der Liebe Tod,” a “Mahler Opera” whose raw materials are the early fairy tale cantata “Das klagende Lied” (composed when Mahler was just 19) and the 1904 song cycle “Kindertotenlieder.” It was revived at the Vienna State Opera in May, when I saw the production.
Indeterminate Openness
What concert music gains from being brought to the opera stage
