FloatingOpera7 made a mistake

FloatingOpera7 made a mistake in his/her user comment from February 2005. He/she seems to believe that Cosima Wagner (played by Antonia Ellis) keeps appearing throughout the movie as a person who tries to separate Mahler from his family. However, he/she confused this with another character of the movie, the opera singer Anna von Mildenburg, played by Dana Gillespie. Mahler had a love affair with Mildenburg before he came to Vienna. By the time he married Alma, that affair had come to an end. Nonetheless, Mahler engaged Mildenburg at the Vienna opera as a prima donna, with an income nearly matching his own. Alma knew there was nothing going on between the two of them, but still must have felt a pang of jealousy for the degree of understanding between the two professional musicians. This is shown in the scene where Mildenburg sings one of Alma's songs accompanied on the piano by Mahler, and the two of them scoff at Alma's inferior talent as a composer in her presence.

Cosima Wagner, whom Mahler has never met in person, only appears once in the movie: as a kind of 3rd Reich style valkyrie in the allegorical "conversion sequence". The scene, which is equally funny and blasphemic, shows Mahler as a Siegfried character who vanquishes the dragon of his old Jewish faith (actually a pig) by means of a Christian cross forged into a sword. Of course this sequence has nothing to do with Mahler's real biography. Cosima Wagner was not at all involved in the decision of making Mahler director of the Vienna opera.