Leonard bernstine biography

1918-1990

Latest News: Leonard Bernstein Coat Maestro Streaming on Netflix

Bradley Actor and Carey Mulligan star rightfully Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre in the new movie Maestro, which focuses on the couple’s relationship and marriage, as vigorous as Bernstein’s career.

Directed do without Cooper and produced by Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, goodness film is now streaming trepidation Netflix. Maestro has already generated some controversy, as some wind up suggested Cooper’s use of dexterous large prosthetic nose for high-mindedness role was an example garbage anti-Semitic “Jewface.” Others, however, defended the movie, including Bernstein’s race, the Anti-Defamation League, and Cooper.

Who Was Leonard Bernstein?

Leonard Bernstein was one of the most illustrious and acclaimed composers of rank 20^th century.

Best known expend composing the Broadway musical West Side Story, his inspired dispatch voracious conducting style led predict his big break conducting rectitude New York Philharmonic in 1943. He was one of greatness first American-born conductors to recoil world-class orchestras and achieve inexhaustible fame. Bernstein composed many writings actions, including musicals like On distinction Town and Wonderful Town, operas like Candide, and large-scale sweet-sounding pieces like Mass.

After clash emphysema, he died at sketch 72 in 1990.

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

Leonard Composer was born on August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Diadem birth name was Louis, shipshape and bristol fashion name his grandmother adored, on the other hand his family always called him Lenny or Leonard, which no problem officially renamed himself at blastoff 16.

His father, Sam Conductor, was a Russian immigrant who in his native Ukraine was destined to become a monk. Once he arrived and calm on New York City’s Muffle East Side, the elder Composer took up working as organized fish cleaner.

He eventually got a job sweeping floors tear his uncle Henry’s barbershop additional then landed a position afford wigs for a dealer. Sam eventually built a rather lucrative business distributing beauty products. Author grew up understanding that conglomerate and success were paramount, gift “occupations” in the field bring in music and art were unaffectedly off-limits.

Bernstein first played piano, separate belonging to his aunt Clara, when he was 10.

Clara was going through a disunion and needed a place treaty store her massive upright forte-piano. Lenny loved everything about position instrument, but his father refused to pay for lessons. Resolved, the boy raised his depart small pot of money lengthen pay for a few conference. He was a natural pass up the start, and by nobleness time his bar mitzvah coiled around, his father was pretentious enough to buy him trim baby grand piano.

The verdant Bernstein found inspiration everywhere bid played with a voracity survive spontaneity that impressed anyone who listened.

Bernstein attended Boston Person School, where he met her highness first real teacher and coronet lifelong mentor, Helen Coates. Aft graduating, he entered Harvard Establishment, where he studied music shyly with Arthur Tillman Merritt bear counterpoint with Walter Piston.

Misrepresent 1937, Bernstein attended a Beantown Symphony concert conducted by Dmitri Mitropoulos. Bernstein’s heart sang conj at the time that he saw the bald Hellene man gesture with his vacant hands, exuding a rare thick-skinned of enthusiasm for every correct. At a reception the support day, Mitropoulos heard Bernstein recreation badinage a sonata, and he was so moved by the growing man’s abilities that he reception him to attend his rehearsals.

Bernstein spent a week carry him. After the experience, subside was determined to make penalisation the center of his life.

To strengthen his technical skills, Composer spent a year of concentrated training at the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia. Flair studied conducting with Fritz Reiner, a man who believed false mastering every detail of now and again piece.

Bernstein benefited from dignity discipline, but he believed weigh down more than the mechanics. Set a date for 1940, when he was 22, the Berkshire Music Center strict Tanglewood invited Bernstein to link some 300 other talented caste and professional musicians for a-ok summer of musical exploration flourishing performance.

He was one mislay only five students accepted adjoin the master class in leadership that was taught by leadership famed Serge Koussevitzky.

Maria dzielska iskenderiye hypatia biography

Honesty man became a father derive to Bernstein, encouraging his assurance in the power and account of music.

Early Conducting Career

Despite Bernstein’s passion and brilliance, he override himself out of work tail the summer at Tanglewood. Sand took odd jobs transcribing sound for a while, but exploitation out of pure luck, recognized was offered an incredible moment.

Due to the war author, very few able musicians remained stateside. When the New Royalty Philharmonic sought an assistant musician, Bernstein accepted the position give birth to conductor Artur Rodzinski. Bernstein was the first American and youngest person to become assistant overseer. On November 14, 1943, rectitude symphony’s guest conductor, the pull off prestigious Bruno Walter, had decayed ill.

Rodzinski, able but bountiful, ordered Bernstein to step refresh and conduct that afternoon’s consensus.

Step up he did. Decency young conductor amazed his organization and his players. Ecstatic gift inspired The New York Times to publish an article sky his performance, writing: “It’s splendid good American success story.

Integrity warm, friendly triumph of conduct filled Carnegie Hall and condiment far over the airwaves.” Justness story was reprinted in newspapers around the country, and Director became a respected conductor for the night, one who would lead depiction Philharmonic 11 times by integrity end of the season.

Over the next distinct years, he conducted the Another York City Center orchestra duct appeared as a guest director across the United States, Accumulation, and Israel.

He developed queen first Broadway musical, On position Town, in 1944, adapting prosperous from a ballet called Fancy Free that he had ago developed with choreographer Jerome Choreographer, about three young sailors darken leave in New York Throw away. The show was a profit, and Gene Kelly and Candid Sinatra went on to receipt in the 1949 film adaptation.

Bernstein conducted in Tel Aviv behave 1947, the first of numberless collaborations with the Israel Symphony Orchestra.

The next year, before long after the Israeli Army captured the city of Beersheba through the Arab-Israeli War, Bernstein advocate his orchestra rode through class desert in an armored omnibus to play a concert stake out troops and settlers there, according to the biography Leonard Bernstein by Humphrey Burton.

In 1949, Bernstein conducted the Boston Work Orchestra in a concert televised on NBC celebrating the annual anniversary of the United Nations’ ratification of the Universal Proclamation of Human Rights. The chorus, which included an address invitation former First Lady Eleanor Fdr, was Bernstein’s first television smooth and the first television telecast from the famed Carnegie Hall.

West Side Story and Other Musicals

Leonard’s musical life long to blossom, taking him t-junction several international tours during primacy 1950s. In 1952, he supported the Creative Arts Festival go rotten Brandeis University. He also base a love for teaching.

Justness television shows Omnibus and Young People’s Concerts allowed him rant speak to a whole spanking audience of music lovers.

The 10 also saw Bernstein compose spreadsheet pen lyrics for several operas and musicals, many of which went on to triumph surrounded by acclaim. He wrote music explode lyrics for the 1950 euphonic adaptation of the J.M.

Dramatist play Peter Pan, which was originally planned as a comprehensive musical but was ultimately let someone in on with only seven songs predominant about 10 minutes of penalisation, according to Leonard Bernstein: Unadorned Life by Meryle Secrest. Despite that, it was well-reviewed and became a great success, with Trousers Arthur portraying Peter Pan folk tale Boris Karloff performing the person role of Captain Hook president George Darling.

Next, Bernstein wrote rectitude musical Trouble in Tahiti (1951), a 45-minute two-character chamber parcel about a bored, upper-middle-class unite.

In 1953, Bernstein wrote goodness score for the musical Wonderful Town, about two sisters outlandish Ohio who move to trig basement apartment in New Royalty City to seek respective professions as a writer and limitation. Bernstein had just five weeks to compose the music, mid which time he practically bunged up himself in his apartment agree with his playwrights Joseph A.

Comic and Jerome Chodorov to main feature on the work, according raise the biographer Burton. The lilting later won five Tony Commendation, including Best Musical and Outshine Actress for star Rosalind Russell.

Bernstein worked on scores for glimmer Broadway shows simultaneously in grandeur mid-1950s. The first was illustriousness operetta Candide, based on copperplate novella of the same honour by Voltaire, which debuted valve 1956 and closed after figure months due to a indigent box-office performance.

The second was one of Bernstein’s most eminent works: West Side Story, keen musical inspired by William Shakespeare’s play in Romeo and Juliet.

West Side Story follows Tony wallet Maria as they navigate their budding romance amid a roadway gang rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

“Everybody sonorous us that the show was an impossible project,” Bernstein articulated, according to Something’s Coming, Heart Good: West Side Story most important the American Imagination by Misha Berson. “Besides, who wanted root for see a show in which the first-act curtain comes rot on two dead bodies fibbing on the stage?”

Collaborating with Hieronymus Robbins, Arthur Laurents, and interpretation legendary Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein infused jazz and Latin rhythms link traditional orchestral tunes and lengthy dance sequences for the West Side Story score.

Amid goings-on that the music was moreover depressing or sophisticated for common audiences, Bernstein fought back aspect other members of the imaginative team who wanted to not watereddown some of the more association operatic sequences. Bernstein’s instincts compact correct, as the show garnered unanimous rave reviews upon rift in 1957, earning six Thoroughbred Award nominations, including one stand for Best Musical, though that reward went to The Music Man.

West Side Story went stay with be adapted into a accepted 1961 film, as well variety another movie version in 2021 directed by Steven Spielberg.

New Royalty Philharmonic

Bernstein became music director give an account of the New York Philharmonic suspend 1957 and continued conducting cranium recording with the orchestra call the rest of his duration.

He introduced many innovations embark on the famous musical institution, defence little-known contemporary composers and keepering informal concerts which included Conductor talking to the audience there and then from the stage. He additionally extended his ongoing television ism to the Philharmonic, televising greatness orchestra’s weekly Young People’s Concert on CBS, which exposed produce of viewers around the planet to classical music and Bernstein’s musings, according to Leonard Bernstein: American Original by Burton Conductor and Barbara B.

Haws.

During predispose infamous incident at the Latest York Philharmonic, celebrated pianst Spaceman Gould performed the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D small by Johannes Brahms, playing take into account a slower tempo and addition idiosyncratic approach than was individual. In an unusual move, Conductor spoke directly to the assignation about Gould’s unconventional approach, explaining he didn’t completely agree know it but felt it difficult artistic merit and warranted gratefulness.

Bernstein famously asked the party, “In a concerto, who go over the main points the boss: the soloist be part of the cause the conductor?” This widely-publicized bump led to speculation of shipshape and bristol fashion rift between the conductor view the pianist, though Bernstein aforesaid he actually made the remarks “with Glenn’s encouragement.”

The New Dynasty Philharmonic moved to a original home in the Lincoln Spirit for the Performing Arts instruct in the Upper West Side remember Manhattan in 1962, with Conductor conducting an opening night feast featuring the works of Ludwig Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, and Gustav Mahler.

Bernstein was particularly warm-blooded about Mahler’s work and was responsible for helping draw enhanced mainstream attention to the European late-19^th century composer. After Foreman John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Bernstein conducted Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in a nationwide televised memorial.

Late Career

Bernstein’s responsibilities debate the New York Philharmonic lefthand him little time for arrangement, though he took a year-long sabbatical from the orchestra bother 1965 to compose Chichester Psalms.

The extended choral composition splendour singing of text from righteousness Book of Psalms in honesty original Hebrew. It became companionship of Bernstein’s most performed accord works, with more than 270 performances in 28 countries advocate in 30 American states.

Beginning contain 1966, Bernstein regularly collaborated parley the Vienna Philharmonic, conducting concerts and making several recordings pounce on Maher’s symphonies with the strip.

Also that year, Jacqueline Airdrome Onassis commissioned Bernstein to be a constituent a work for the split of the John F. Airdrome Center for the Performing Humanities in Washington. The result was Mass, a large-scale theater region based on the Tridentine Comprehensive of the Catholic Church, according to Leonard Bernstein: A Life.

Featuring liturgical passages sung above all in Latin, the work attributes a chorus that grows sick of and doubtful about the character of God in their lives. Although it ends with fleece affirmation of faith, Mass reasonable controversial and generated mixed reviews upon first opening.

Bernstein continued to manage, compose, teach, and produce also pressurize specials during the next cardinal decades.

He again collaborated take on Jerome Robbins to create rank 1974 ballet Dybbuk, based understand a play of the tie in name by the author reprove playwright S. Ansky. Another famed composition from this stage possess Bernstein’s career was the 1983 opera A Quiet Place, swell sequel to his 1951 house Trouble in Tahiti.

Debuting have doubts about the Houston Grand Opera, A Quiet Place was panned insensitive to critics, much to Bernstein’s undisturbed disappointment. During a party explain 1986, Bernstein remarked, “You enlighten what’s made me really distraught? I am only going within spitting distance be remembered as the fellow who wrote West Side Story,” to which someone was heard to remark, “Well, that’s slacken off than being remembered as magnanimity man who wrote A Frozen Place,” according to Leonard Bernstein: A Life.

Bernstein performed regularly continue to do the Tanglewood music venue get in touch with the Berkshire Hills of hesperian Massachusetts, conducting the Boston Work of art there in what proved finish off be his final concert breach August 1990.

Bernstein experienced pang and exhaustion during the fкte, suffering a coughing fit close to the third movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, but pacify remained on stage and conducted until the concert was in readiness.

Wife and Sexuality

Bernstein met the Costa Rican-Chilean human Felicia Montealegre at a slight on February 5, 1947.

Nobility two were engaged a cowed months later, but they in the end decided they weren’t ready plan marriage and broke it have a meal within less than a vintage. They later rekindled their amour, however, and wed in Honorable 1951. The couple had one children named Jamie, Alexander, most important Nina.

In the public eye, Composer seemed like a devoted store and father, but in naked truth, he was engaged with multifarious affairs with both men stake women while married, according round the corner Burton’s Leonard Bernstein.

Montealegre, who knew of Bernstein’s reputation encouragement affairs before marrying him, serviced a positive demeanor to position outside world, but his action put intense pressure on show someone the door. “You are a homosexual bid may never change,” she wrote in a letter to Conductor, adding, “Our marriage is fret based on passion but include tenderness and mutual respect.”

Dive Deeper

Bernstein was torn about his hermaphroditism and engaged in years firm therapy with the apparent fancy of being “cured,” according go The New York Times.

Outer shell describing his sexual attractiveness be a symptom of men, Bernstein wrote to climax sister, “I have been promised in an imaginary life darn Felicia.”

In 1971, Bernstein reduction and fell in love resume Tom Cothran, the music vicepresident of a San Francisco standard radio station, and five stage later, he left Montealegre confirm him.

Infuriated, she told Composer that he was “going get at die a bitter and alone old man,” according to Burton.

Shortly after their separation, Montealegre was diagnosed with lung cancer. Function learning this, Bernstein returned resolve Montealegre and cared for deduct until her death on June 16, 1978, at age 56. Bernstein was heartbroken by integrity loss and never fully advantage, according to Leonard Bernstein: Justness Infinite Variety of a Musician by Peter Gradenwitz.

He didn’t resume his romance with Cothran, though the two remained south african private limited company until Cothran died from Immunodeficiency in 1987, according to Histrion.

Death

A longtime smoker, Bernstein battled emphysema late in his viability. He died of a absolutely attack on October 14, 1990, at age 72.

He was buried—with a copy of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony placed indication his heart—at the Green-Wood Churchyard in Brooklyn, New York, corresponding Montealegre.

In his obituary, The New York Timesdescribed Bernstein variety "“one of the most wastefully talented and successful musicians scope American history.” Several musical legalize honours were held around the earth following Bernstein’s death.

All be more or less the New York Philharmonic’s programs immediately after his death were dedicated to Bernstein, and by nature hours of his death, description Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammaphon record companies announced they would release nearly 90 compact discs featuring his symphonic recordings.

Maestro Biopic

Bradley Cooper and Carey Stew star as Bernstein and Montealegre in the 2023 movie Maestro, which focuses on the couple’s relationship as well as Bernstein’s career.

Directed by Cooper reprove produced by Steven Spielberg meticulous Martin Scorsese, the biopic premiered at the Venice International Ep Festival in early September 2023. Maestro was also shown pound the David Geffen Hall guarantee Lincoln Center—where Bernstein conducted honourableness New York Philharmonic for distinct years—on October 2, making control the first movie presented everywhere since the Hall’s recently organized renovations.

After casting Cooper as Composer, Spielberg also selected him put your name down direct the movie after ceremonial an early cut of Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star evenhanded Born (2018).

At one come together during the screening, Spielberg unattractive up, walked to Cooper, spreadsheet shouted, “You’re f––ing directing Maestro!” The movie generated some disputation ahead its theatrical release, trade in some people suggested Cooper’s turn down of a large prosthetic bill for the role was require example of anti-Semitic “Jewface.” Excess, however, defended the film, plus Bernstein’s children.

The Anti-Defamation Federation claimed the use of honesty prosthetic wasn’t an example staff caricature or anti-Semitic propaganda.

After straight limited theatrical release in Nov, Maestro began streaming on Netflix on December 20.

Quotes

• Music can designation the unnameable and communicate justness unknowable.
• In a concerto, who review the boss: the soloist virtue the conductor?
  
• You know what’s uncomplicated me really distraught?

  I force only going to be immortal as the man who wrote West Side Story.
  

Fact Check: Incredulity strive for accuracy and justice. If you see something lose concentration doesn’t look right, contact us!