Alma Mahler's romantic life reads like a who's who of early 20th-century European culture.

Born Alma Schindler in Vienna in 1879, she was a talented musician and composer who moved among the city's artists and intellectuals. As a teenager, she caught the attention of painter Gustav Klimt, and she later had a passionate relationship with composer Alexander von Zemlinsky.

Then came Gustav Mahler.

Alma was 22 and Mahler 41 when they married in 1902. According to conductor Willem Mengelberg, Mahler had written the exquisite Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony as a wordless declaration of love to her.

Eight years later, Alma began an affair with architect Walter Gropius, the future founder of the Bauhaus. Mahler discovered it in spectacular fashion: Gropius reportedly sent Alma a love letter but mistakenly addressed the envelope to Gustav Mahler.

Devastated, Mahler turned to Sigmund Freud, spending several hours walking and talking with him about his marriage.

After Mahler died in 1911, Alma became involved with expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. Their tumultuous relationship inspired his famous painting The Bride of the Wind. After Alma ended the affair, Kokoschka took his obsession to a bizarre extreme: he commissioned a life-size doll modeled after her.

Alma later married Gropius, but during their marriage she fell in love with writer Franz Werfel. She divorced Gropius and eventually married Werfel in 1929. They remained together until his death in 1945.

By the time Alma died in New York in 1964, her romantic life had intertwined with an extraordinary collection of cultural figures: Mahler, Zemlinsky, Gropius, Kokoschka and Werfel, with Klimt appearing at the beginning of the story.

Alma was more than the woman who captivated famous men. She composed songs of her own, became an influential cultural figure and, with Werfel, made a dramatic escape from Nazi-occupied France in 1940.