Alma Mahler was described by one Viennese contemporary, Siegfried Lipiner, as "spiteful, vain and overbearing". The philosopher Theodor Adorno called her a "monster". And Marietta Torberg, the wife of writer Friedrich Torberg, said she was "a grande dame and, at the same time, a cesspool".This is largely how history remembers Mahler, the beautiful, intelligent wife of composer Gustav Mahler. Her life spanned two world wars, taking in [...]