Mahler, a huge admirer of Wagner, went one step further by actually adopting vegetarianism in practice, as well as in principle - for a short time.
Eating out with friends one evening, the composer rejected all the more substantial meat dishes on offer, instead choosing spinach and apples!
He would breakfast on diet bread with milk, butter and jam, served alongside a cup of coffee. He once remarked that, as a result of vegetarianism, he expected ‘nothing less than the regeneration of mankind’.
Mahler also had a fondness for pastries. When he was told that a friend disliked Viennese apricot dumplings, he exclaimed, ‘What! Is there a Viennese to whom Marillenknödel means nothing?’
