The cover design was by Werner Koberstein, who designed hundreds of album covers for
Deutsche Grammophon
records from about 1970 to the mid 1990's; the albums he illustrated
were for the classical music series with the exception of a reading by
Rolf Becker of
Granny (
Oma), a series of poems for children by actor
Peter Härtling.
Gustav Mahler ~
Death In Venice
vinyl LP front cover detail
cover design by Werner Koberstein
detail photo of album cover by Styrous®
Gustav Mahler ~
Death In Venice
vinyl LP back cover
cover design by Werner Koberstein
film stills
photo of album cover by Styrous®
In addition to the music of Mahler, Visconti included works from other
composers. One is the ballad
by
Armando Gil, sung by the strolling player,
Chi con le donne vole aver fortuna (
He who wants to be successful with the ladies). A lovely and very Italian song (
link below).
photo by Angélica Martínez
Gustav Mahler ~
Death In Venice
vinyl LP back cover detail
cover design by Werner Koberstein
film stills
detail photo of album cover by Styrous®
A plus for me in the film was
Silvana Mangano; I fell in love with her from the time I saw her in the 1951 film,
Anna (
link below). She plays the mother of the 14 year old
Polish boy named Tadzio, portrayed by
Björn Andrésen.
The film is based on the novella
Death in Venice by the German author
Thomas Mann, which was first published in 1912 as
Der Tod in Venedig.
The main character of the book, Ashenbach, is a writer suffering
writer's block who visits
Venice
and is liberated, uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed, by the
sight of a stunningly beautiful youth, Tadzio, a nickname for the
Polish name
Tadeusz and based on
a boy Mann had seen during his visit to Venice in 1911. Though he never speaks to the boy, much less touches him, the writer
finds himself drawn into ruinous inward passion; meanwhile,
Venice,
and finally, the writer himself, succumb to the
cholera plague.
Pretty heavy stuff!
cover design by Werner Koberstein
The
filmed version of the story line changes the writer to a composer but
it is the only change; he is pretty much in the same situation,
writer's block, in
Venice
and obsessed with a fantasy, etc. The film has a mysterious feeling to
it, even in the day time scenes with bright sunlight. The pace is
languid, yet you can't tear yourself away from it because you are
mesmerized by the visuals, the music and the performance by
Dirk Bogarde which is stunning!
I liked Bogarde from the time I first saw him in the 1963 film,
The Servant. That was a weird film for it's time, to say the least. Whereas he was the aggressor in
The Servant, he is the victim by his own choosing here.
Gustav Mahler ~
Death In Venice
vinyl LP back cover detail
cover design by Werner Koberstein
film stills
detail photo of album cover by Styrous®
In 1986 Russell Harty did an intensely personal interview of Dirk Bogarde at Bogarde's house in France for the series Russell Harty's Grand Tour for the BBC. Bogarde describes the making of Death In Venice and tells of the horrors he witnessed in WW II, the people he worked with, in particular, Judy Garland and that he never really liked acting. Harty also interviewed Salvador Dalí for the series (link below).
From Wikipedia:
The original intention by Thomas Mann was to write about "passion as confusion and
degradation,” after having been fascinated by the true story of the love for 18-year-old Baroness Ulrike von Levetzow by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which led him to write his "Marienbad Elegy". The death of composer Mahler
in Vienna in May of 1911 and Mann's interest in the boy Władzio during a 1911
summer vacation in Venice were additional experiences occupying
his thoughts. He used the story to illuminate certain convictions about
the relationship between life and mind, with Aschenbach representing the
intellect. Mann was also influenced by Sigmund Freud and his views on dreams, as well as by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who had visited Venice several times.
Gustav Mahler ~
Death In Venice
vinyl LP back cover details
detail photos of album cover by Styrous®
The boy who inspired "Tadzio" was
Baron Władysław Moes, whose first name was usually shortened as
Władzio or just
Adzio.
This story was uncovered by Mann's translator, Andrzej
Dołęgowski, around 1964, and was published in the German press in 1965.
Some sources report that Moes himself did not learn of the connection
until he saw the 1971 film version of the novel (
links below).
Gustav Mahler ~
Death In Venice
vinyl LP back cover details
cover design by Werner Koberstein
film stills
detail photos of album cover by Styrous®
Mahler experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic
press but his innovative productions and insistence on the
highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the
greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the
stage works of
Wagner,
Mozart, and
Tchaikovsky. Late in his life he was briefly director of the
Metropolitan Opera in
New York and the
New York Philharmonic.
Composing was a part-time activity while he earned his living as a
conductor. His works are generally designed for large orchestral forces,
symphonic choruses and operatic soloists, many controversial when first
performed.
Between 1901 and 1904 he wrote ten settings of poems by
Friedrich Rückert, five of which were collected as
Rückert-Lieder. The other five formed the song cycle
Kindertotenlieder (
Songs on the Death of Children).
These poems were not intended for publication, and they appeared in
print only in 1871, five years after the poet's death. The
Kindertotenlieder is one of my favorites of his works. It is passionate, extremely sad and unearthly beautiful.
An interesting note about it:
At the time he wrote the work, Mahler was no stranger to the deaths
of children. Hefling writes: "Such tragedy was familiar to Mahler, eight
of his siblings died during their childhood. Among all of them, the
death of his closest younger brother Ernst in 1875
had affected him most deeply, and he confided to [his friend] Natalie
[Bauer-Lechner] that 'such frightful sorrow he had never again
experienced, as great a loss he had nevermore borne'."
Mahler resumed the composition of the interrupted work in 1904, only two weeks after the birth of his own second child;
this upset his wife Alma, who "found it incomprehensible and feared Mahler was tempting Providence."
Alma's fears proved all too prophetic, four years after the
work had been completed the Mahlers' daughter Maria died of scarlet
fever, aged four. Mahler wrote to
Guido Adler:
"I placed myself in the situation that a child of mine had died. When I
really lost my daughter, I could not have written these songs any
more." Alma never forgave him and blamed him for tempting fate. Mahler was
Jewish; she was an
antisemite and vicious, so, it made for a very strange union (
links below).
Alma Mahler was a composer in her own right (
links below)
but cut her careet short at the insistence of Mahler. She outlived Mahler
by 50 years, destroying all but one of her letters to him, and
suppressing or falsifying many of his to her for fear of being judged
too harshly by posterity. None of the music she chose for her funeral
was by Mahler.
Pathological cruelty, antisemitism, vanity and a sense that the world owed
Alma Maria Schindler
something in token for her brilliance and beauty were some of the
traits her admirers and enemies alike recognised in Alma, traits also
shared by her hero,
Richard Wagner. Like him, she was a passionate follower of
Friedrich Nietzsche. Her marriages – to Mahler,
Walter Gropius and
Franz Werfel – and her many relationships, including those with
Gustav Klimt (who gave her her first kiss, at 17), her composition teacher
Alexander Zemlinsky (her first lover) and painter
Oskar Kokoschka (perhaps the only man she really loved), have made her one of the 20th century's most famous muses and femmes fatales (
links below).
Siegfried Lipiner,
one of Mahler's intellectual adversaries, found her "spiteful, vain and
overbearing ... lacking in warmth, devoid of naturalness, sincerity and
good sense".
Gustav Mahler died from
pneumonia on May 18, 1911, at the Löw sanatorium in Vienna. On May 22, 1911, Mahler was buried in the
Grinzing cemetery (
de),
as he had requested, next to his daughter Maria. His tombstone was
inscribed only with his name because "any who come to look for me will
know who I was and the rest don't need to know."
Alma was absent, but among the mourners at a
relatively pomp-free funeral were
Arnold Schoenberg (whose wreath
described Mahler as "the holy Gustav Mahler"),
Bruno Walter, Alfred
Roller,
Gustav Klimt and representatives from many of the great European opera houses.
Composers who were influenced by Mahler are
Arnold Schoenberg,
Alban Berg,
Anton Webern,
Dmitri Shostakovich and
Benjamin Britten.
detail photos of record cover back by Styrous®
Ashenbach (
Dirk Bogarde) & Tadzio (
Björn Andrésen)
The
record sleeve back is a special printing for this album advertising the
recording of Mahler's ten symphonies and features a detail from a
painting by
Gustav Klimt (link below).
detail photos of record sleeve by Styrous®
Tracklist:
Side 1:
Symphonie Nr. 5 Cis-moll
A1 - 4. Satz: Adagietto. Sehr Langsam
Symphonie Nr. 7 E-moll ("Lied Der Nacht")
A2 - 2. Satz: Nachtmusik. Allegro Moderato
Symphonie Nr. 3 D-moll ("Ein Sommermorgentraum")
Side 2:
B1 - Zweite Abteilung: Nr. 4 "O Mensch! Gibt Acht!" (Aus Nietzsche "Also Sprach Zarathustra") Sehr Langsam. Misterioso
B2
- Zweite Abteilung: Nr. 5 "Bimm Bamm! Es Sungen Drei Engel Einen Süssen
Gesang" (Aus "Des Knaben Wunderhorn") Lustig Im Tempo Und Keck Im
Ausdruck
Companies, etc.
Printed By – Gebrüder Jänecke
Credits:
Alto Vocals [Contralto] – Marjorie Thomas (tracks: B)
Choir – Tölzer Knabenchor (tracks: B), Damenchor Des Bayerischen Rundfunks* (tracks: B)
Composed By – Gustav Mahler
Conductor – Rafael Kubelik
Design – Werner Koberstein
Orchestra – Symphonie-Orchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Notes:
[Label]
Made in Germany
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Rights Society: D.P.
Gustav Mahler – Themen Aus = Themes Featured In Visconti's Film Der Tod In Venedig = Death In Venice
Label: Deutsche Grammophon – 2538 124
Format: Vinyl, LP, Stereo
Country: Germany
Released: 1971
Genre: Classical
Style: Modern, Romantic
