As director of the Vienna Court Opera from 1897 to 1907, Gustav Mahler conducted more than 600 performances from a repertory of more than 100 titles, 33 of them new to the company. But for all his renown as a symphonist and song writer, Mahler composed no stage works of his own. While his early choral cantata Das Klagende Lied, based on a macabre medieval legend, tells a story, it’s a stretch to call it operatic or theatrical; his late song cycle Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on the Death of Children”) has no theatrical pretensions at all. Undeterred, the Vienna State Opera (successor of the Court Opera) honors its erstwhile leader with a staging of these mismatched masterpieces. The perennially controversial Calixto Bieito directs; Lorenzo Viotti conducts. The baritone Florian Boesch, as soulful as he is rugged, is the lone soloist for the haunting second half of the program. —Matthew Gurewitsch