EXHIBIT ON THE DWARF

ALEXANDER ZEMLINSKI THE FOREIGNER. ITINERARY OF A MUSICIAN AT THE CROSSROADS OF WORLDS.

An exhibit produced by the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler, in partnership with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales & la Fondation Royaumont. This exhibit received support from the Ministry of Culture and the Fonds Zemlinsky of Vienna.

The exhibit raises the curtain on the fascinating personality of a composer who remains little known by the general public, Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942).

His opera The Dwarf reveals an intimate and tormented facet typical of post-romanticism.

"As with Gustav Mahler, the Viennese Alexander von Zemlinsky (1871-1942) was recognized in his day more as a conductor than composer. The rise of Nazism obliged him to emigrate to the United States where, unlike other artists such as Kurt Weill, Marlene Dietrich or Fritz Lang, he was unable to adapt to American life and died forgotten, after suffering severe material hardship. It has been only quite recently, in the early 1970s and thanks to recordings (several recordings of its Lyric Symphony), that the world rediscovered this essential figure of the last embers of the Viennese tradition, the heir of Schubert, Brahms and Mahler. A total musician, he is the author of several scores for orchestra, collections of lieder, of four string quartets and eight operas (the last, Circe, unfinished) ­ his preferred genre.

The composer wished to write a work “on the tragedy of the ugly man” ­ guided perhaps by his subconscious… Zemlinsky apparently suffered from physical shame, if we are to believe Alma Schindler, his student, who described him as “comic, small, with no chin, and protruding eyes”; she also preferred to marry Gustav Mahler. Furthermore, some have seen in the character of the Capricious and cruel infant the thinly disguised portrait of the beautiful Alma." Franck Mallet