Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan star as Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre inside the new film Maestro, which specializes in the couple’s dating and marriage, in addition to Bernstein’s profession. Directed by way of Cooper and produced by using Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, the movie is now streaming on Netflix. Maestro has already generated some controversy, as a few humans recommended Cooper’s use of a big prosthetic nose for the position become an example of anti-Semitic “Jewface.” Others, however, defended the film, together with Bernstein’s kids, the Anti-Defamation League, and Cooper.
Who Was Leonard Bernstein?
Leonard Bernstein become one of the maximum celebrated and acclaimed composers of the 20 th century. Best regarded for composing the Broadway musical West Side Story, his stimulated and voracious conducting fashion led to his big break engaging in the New York Philharmonic in 1943. He was one of the first American-born conductors to lead global-magnificence orchestras and achieve worldwide fame. Bernstein composed many works, such as musicals like On the Town and Wonderful Town, operas like Candide, and big-scale musical pieces like Mass. He battled emphysema until his death in 1990 at the age of 72.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Leonard Bernstein
BORN: August 25, 1918
BIRTHPLACE: Lawrence, Massachusetts
DIED: October 14, 1990
SPOUSE: Felicia Cohn Montealegre Bernstein (1951-1978)
CHILDREN: Jamie, Alexander, and Nina
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Virgo
Early Life and Education
On August 25, 1918, Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. His birth call became Louis, a name his grandmother loved, but his circle of relatives usually referred to as him Lenny or Leonard, which he officially renamed himself at age sixteen.
His father, Sam Bernstein, become a Russian immigrant who in his local Ukraine changed into destined to grow to be a rabbi. Once he arrived and settled on New York City’s Lower East Side, the elder Bernstein took up operating as a fish cleaner. He ultimately got a process sweeping flooring in his uncle Henry’s barbershop and then landed a role stocking wigs for a supplier. Sam in the end constructed a as an alternative profitable enterprise distributing splendor products. Leonard grew up know-how that enterprise and fulfillment had been paramount, and “occupations” inside the area of track and artwork have been clearly off-limits.
Bernstein first played piano, one belonging to his aunt Clara, whilst he turned into 10. Clara become going thru a divorce and wanted an area to store her large upright piano. Lenny cherished the entirety approximately the device, however his father refused to pay for instructions. Determined, the boy raised his own small pot of money to pay for a few classes. He become a herbal from the start, and by the point his bar mitzvah rolled around, his father changed into impressed sufficient to buy him a toddler grand piano. The youthful Bernstein found inspiration everywhere and played with a fervour and spontaneity that left a lasting impression on everyone in attendance.
Bernstein attended Boston Latin School, where he met his first real trainer and his lifelong mentor, Helen Coates. After graduating, he entered Harvard University, where he studied track theory with Arthur Tillman Merritt and counterpoint with Walter Piston. In 1937, Bernstein attended a Boston Symphony concert conducted by way of Dmitri Mitropoulos. Bernstein’s coronary heart sang when he noticed the bald Greek guy gesture along with his bare fingers, exuding an extraordinary type of enthusiasm for every rating. At a reception day after today, Mitropoulos heard Bernstein play a sonata, and he become so moved via the young man’s abilities that he invited him to attend his rehearsals. Bernstein spent every week with him. After the revel in, he turned into determined to make music the middle of his life.
To reinforce his technical abilities, Bernstein spent a year of in depth training at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He studied undertaking with Fritz Reiner, a person who believed in gaining knowledge of each detail of each piece. Bernstein benefited from the area, however he believed in more than the mechanics. When Bernstein turned 22 in 1940, the Berkshire Music Centre at Tanglewood urged him to enrol over three hundred skilled musicians and students for a summer time of musical exploration and performance. He changed into one of handiest 5 students prevalent within the grasp elegance in accomplishing that changed into taught by way of the famed Serge Koussevitzky. The guy became a father determine to Bernstein, encouraging his notion inside the electricity and significance of tune
Early Conducting Career
Despite Bernstein’s ardour and brilliance, he observed himself out of labor after the summer time at Tanglewood. He took abnormal jobs transcribing track for some time, but then out of natural luck, he became supplied an superb opportunity. Due to the warfare draft, very few capable musicians remained stateside. When the New York Philharmonic sought an assistant conductor, Bernstein normal the position from conductor Artur Rodzinski. Bernstein was the first American and youngest character to turn out to be assistant conductor. On November 14, 1943, the symphony’s visitor conductor, the very prestigious Bruno Walter, had fallen sick. Rodzinski, capable but generous, ordered Bernstein to step up and behavior that afternoon’s live performance.
Step up he did. The young conductor surprised his crowd and his players. Ecstatic applause stimulated The New York Times to publish an article approximately his performance, writing: “It’s an awesome American success story. The heat, pleasant triumph of it stuffed Carnegie Hall and spread far over the airwaves.” The story was reprinted in newspapers across the united states of america, and Bernstein became a reputable conductor in a single day, one that could lead the Philharmonic 11 instances by means of the cease of the season.
Over the subsequent several years, he carried out the New York City Center orchestra and regarded as a visitor conductor throughout the USA, Europe, and Israel. He evolved his first Broadway musical, On the Town, in 1944, adapting it from a ballet called Fancy Free that he had earlier evolved with choreographer Jerome Robbins, approximately 3 younger sailors on depart in New York City. The show turned into a success, and Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra went directly to big name within the 1949 movie variation.
Bernstein performed in Tel Aviv in 1947, the first of many collaborations with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The subsequent 12 months, rapidly after the Israeli Army captured the metropolis of Beersheba at some point of the Arab-Israeli War, Bernstein and his orchestra rode through the desolate tract in an armored bus to play a concert for troops and settlers there, in step with the biography Leonard Bernstein by means of Humphrey Burton.
In 1949, Bernstein conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a concert televised on NBC celebrating the only-yr anniversary of the United Nations’ ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The live performance, which blanketed an address by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, became Bernstein’s first television look and the primary tv broadcast from the famed Carnegie Hall.
West Side Story and Other Musicals
Leonard’s musical existence continued to blossom, taking him on numerous international tours in the course of the Fifties. In 1952, he founded the Creative Arts Festival at Brandeis University. He also observed a love for teaching. The tv indicates Omnibus and Young People’s Concerts allowed him to talk to a whole new audience of track fans.
The decade also saw Bernstein compose and pen lyrics for numerous operas and musicals, many of which went on to triumph amid acclaim. He wrote track and lyrics for the 1950 musical model of the J.M. Barrie play Peter Pan, which changed into at the start planned as a complete musical however changed into ultimately staged with simplest seven songs and about 10 minutes of music, in keeping with Leonard Bernstein: A Life with the aid of Meryle Secrest. Nevertheless, it was properly-reviewed and have become a first-rate fulfillment, with Jean Arthur portraying Peter Pan and Boris Karloff performing the twin role of Captain Hook and George Darling.
Next, Bernstein wrote the musical Trouble in Tahiti (1951), a forty five-minute two-man or woman chamber piece about a bored, higher-middle-class couple. In 1953, Bernstein wrote the rating for the musical Wonderful Town, about sisters from Ohio who move to a basement condo in New York City to are looking for respective careers as a writer and actor. Bernstein had just five weeks to compose the song, at some point of which era he practically locked himself in his condo along with his playwrights Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov to attention on the work, in step with the biographer Burton. The musical later won 5 Tony Awards, consisting of Best Musical and Best Actress for megastar Rosalind Russell.
Bernstein worked on ratings for two Broadway suggests simultaneously in the mid-Fifties. The first changed into the operetta Candide, based totally on a novella of the identical name via Voltaire, which debuted in 1956 and closed after two months because of a negative field-workplace performance. The 2d changed into one of Bernstein’s most celebrated works: West Side Story, a musical inspired by way of William Shakespeare’s play in Romeo and Juliet.
West Side Story follows Tony and Maria as they navigate their budding romance amid a avenue gang competition between the Jets and the Sharks on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “Everybody informed us that the show changed into an not possible project,” Bernstein said, according to Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination by using Misha Berson. “Besides, who desired to look a display in which the first-act curtain comes down on two dead bodies mendacity at the stage?”
Collaborating with Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and the legendary Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein infused jazz and Latin rhythms into conventional orchestral tunes and extended dance sequences for the West Side Story rating. Amid worries that the tune become too depressing or state-of-the-art for famous audiences, Bernstein fought lower back against other members of the innovative crew who wanted to reduce a number of the extra complex operatic sequences. Bernstein’s instincts proved accurate, because the show garnered unanimous rave reviews upon establishing in 1957, earning six Tony Award nominations, along with one for Best Musical, although that award went to The Music Man. West Side Story went to be tailored right into a popular 1961 film, in addition to every other movie model in 2021 directed by way of Steven Spielberg.
New York Philharmonic
Bernstein became track director of the New York Philharmonic in 1957 and endured accomplishing and recording with the orchestra for the relaxation of his career. He introduced many inventions to the well-known musical group, championing little-recognized contemporary composers and web hosting informal concerts which covered Bernstein speakme to the audience without delay from the degree. He also prolonged his ongoing television coaching to the Philharmonic, televising the orchestra’s weekly Young People’s Concert on CBS, which uncovered thousands and thousands of viewers around the sector to classical song and Bernstein’s musings, according to Leonard Bernstein: American Original via Burton Bernstein and Barbara B. Haws.
During one infamous incident on the New York Philharmonic, celebrated pianst Glenn Gould executed the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor by using Johannes Brahms, playing at a slower tempo and extra idiosyncratic technique than turned into usual. In an uncommon move, Bernstein spoke without delay to the audience about Gould’s unconventional technique, explaining he didn’t absolutely believe it however felt it had inventive merit and guaranteed appreciation. Bernstein famously requested the gang, “In a concerto, who’s the boss: the soloist or the conductor?” This widely-publicized incident brought about speculation of a rift among the conductor and the pianist, even though Bernstein stated he really made the remarks “with Glenn’s encouragement.”
The New York Philharmonic moved to a brand new domestic within the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1962, with Bernstein accomplishing a gap night time gala presenting the works of Ludwig Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, and Gustav Mahler. Bernstein changed into specially obsessed on Mahler’s paintings and changed into answerable for helping draw more mainstream attention to the Austrian past due-19th century composer. After President John F. Kennedy became assassinated in 1963, Bernstein performed Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in a nationally televised memorial.
Late Career
Bernstein’s duties with the New York Philharmonic left him little time for composing, although he took a yr-lengthy sabbatical from the orchestra in 1965 to compose Chichester Psalms. The prolonged choral composition features making a song of textual content from the Book of Psalms inside the authentic Hebrew. It have become one in all Bernstein’s most done concert works, with extra than 270 performances in 28 international locations and in 30 American states.
Beginning in 1966, Bernstein often collaborated with the Vienna Philharmonic, carrying out live shows and making numerous recordings of Maher’s symphonies with the orchestra. Also that year, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis commissioned Bernstein to compose a piece for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. The result turned into Mass, a huge-scale theater piece based at the Tridentine Mass of the Catholic Church, in line with Leonard Bernstein: A Life. Featuring liturgical passages sung broadly speaking in Latin, the work capabilities a chorus that grows disappointed and doubtful approximately the role of God of their lives. Although it ends with an confirmation of faith, Mass proved arguable and generated mixed critiques upon first commencing.
Bernstein persisted to conduct, compose, train, and convey tv specials at some point of the following two decades. He again collaborated with Jerome Robbins to create the 1974 ballet Dybbuk, based upon a play of the equal name by means of the author and playwright S. Ansky. Another remarkable composition from this degree of Bernstein’s career became the 1983 opera A Quiet Place, a sequel to his 1951 opera Trouble in Tahiti. Debuting at the Houston Grand Opera, A Quiet Place become panned by using critics, tons to Bernstein’s fantastic sadness. During a celebration in 1986, Bernstein remarked, “You recognise what’s made me simply distraught? I am handiest going to be remembered as the person who wrote West Side Story,” to which someone turned into heard to observation, “Well, that’s higher than being remembered as the person who wrote A Quiet Place,” in line with Leonard Bernstein: A Life.
Bernstein achieved regularly on the Tanglewood track venue inside the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, engaging in the Boston Symphony there in what proved to be his very last concert in August 1990. Bernstein skilled pain and exhaustion for the duration of the show, suffering a coughing healthy at some stage in the 1/3 motion of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, but he remained on degree and conducted till the concert changed into completed.
Wife and Sexuality
Bernstein met the Costa Rican-Chilean actor Felicia Montealegre at a party on February 5, 1947. The have been engaged some months later, however they ultimately decided they weren’t geared up for marriage and broke it off inside less than a 12 months. They later rekindled their romance, however, and wed in August 1951. The couple had 3 children named Jamie, Alexander, and Nina.
In the public eye, Bernstein appeared like a devoted husband and father, but in reality, he turned into engaged with more than one affairs with each women and men whilst married, in line with Burton’s Leonard Bernstein. Montealegre, who knew of Bernstein’s recognition for affairs earlier than marrying him, maintained a positive demeanor to the outdoor international, but his behavior positioned extreme stress on her. “You are a homosexual and might in no way exchange,” she wrote in a letter to Bernstein, adding, “Our marriage isn’t always based totally on ardour however on tenderness and mutual admire.”
Bernstein changed into torn about his bisexuality and engaged in years of therapy with the apparent wish of being “cured,” consistent with The New York Times. In describing his sexual elegance toward men, Bernstein wrote to his sister, “I have been engaged in an imaginary life with Felicia.”
In 1971, Bernstein met and fell in love with Tom Cothran, the song director of a San Francisco classical radio station, and five years later, he left Montealegre for him. Infuriated, she informed Bernstein that he became “going to die a sour and lonely antique man,” consistent with Burton.
Shortly after their separation, Montealegre was recognized with lung most cancers. Upon gaining knowledge of this, Bernstein returned to Montealegre and cared for her till her demise on June 16, 1978, at age 56. Bernstein turned into heartbroken through the loss and by no means absolutely recovered, in line with Leonard Bernstein: The Infinite Variety of a Musician via Peter Gradenwitz. He didn’t resume his romance with Cothran, although the 2 remained friends until Cothran died from AIDS in 1987, consistent with Burton.
Death
A longtime smoker, Bernstein battled emphysema late in his existence. He died of a heart assault on October 14, 1990, at age seventy two. He was buried—with a duplicate of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony placed over his heart—on the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, alongside Montealegre
In his obituary, The New York Times described Bernstein as ““one of the maximum prodigally proficient and a hit musicians in American records.” Several musical tributes have been held round the sector following Bernstein’s demise. All of the New York Philharmonic’s applications right away after his death had been dedicated to Bernstein, and within hours of his dying, the Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammaphon report companies announced they would release almost 90 compact discs proposing his symphonic recordings.
Maestro Biopic
Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan star as Bernstein and Montealegre within the 2023 movie Maestro, which focuses on the couple’s dating in addition to Bernstein’s career. Directed via Cooper and produced by Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, the biopic premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in early September 2023. Maestro changed into additionally proven on the David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center—where Bernstein carried out the New York Philharmonic for many years—on October 2, making it the first movie offered there since the Hall’s lately finished renovations.
After casting Cooper as Bernstein, Spielberg additionally selected him to direct the movie after looking an early cut of Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star is Born (2018). At one factor all through the screening, Spielberg stood up, walked to Cooper, and shouted, “You’re f––ing directing Maestro!” The movie generated a few controversy ahead its theatrical release, as some human beings suggested Cooper’s use of a huge prosthetic nostril for the function become an example of anti-Semitic “Jewface.” Others, however, defended the film, which includes Bernstein’s youngsters. The Anti-Defamation League claimed the usage of the prosthetic wasn’t an example of cartoon or anti-Semitic propaganda.
After a limited theatrical launch in November, Maestro began streaming on Netflix on December 20.
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