Friend, teacher and later brother-in-law of Schoenberg, Alexander Zemlinsky won growing importance in the Viennese musical world at the beginning of the 20th century. He taught Alma Mahler, who discussed with her husband, with reference to Zemlinsky, the relationship between physical ugliness and spiritual beauty. His earlier career was at the Vienna Volksoper, in Prague and in Berlin. 1933 forced his return to Vienna, from where he fled in 1938 via Prague to the United States of America, dying there in 1942.

Stage Works
Mahler promised, before his resignation, to stage the ballet Das gläserne Herz at the Vienna Court Opera, a work based on Hofmannsthal from which an orchestral suite was later derived. Ze...