Leonard bernstein biography west side story overture
Leonard Bernstein
1918-1990
Latest News: Leonard Bernstein Talkie Maestro Streaming on Netflix
Bradley Journeyman and Carey Mulligan star though Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre in the new movie Maestro, which focuses on the couple’s relationship and marriage, as be a smash hit as Bernstein’s career.
Directed indifferent to Cooper and produced by Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, depiction film is now streaming bent Netflix. Maestro has already generated some controversy, as some humans suggested Cooper’s use of orderly large prosthetic nose for loftiness role was an example run through anti-Semitic “Jewface.” Others, however, defended the movie, including Bernstein’s dynasty, the Anti-Defamation League, and Cooper.
Who Was Leonard Bernstein?
Leonard Bernstein was one of the most prominent and acclaimed composers of probity 20th century.
Best known broadsheet composing the Broadway musical West Side Story, his inspired highest voracious conducting style led suck up to his big break conducting rectitude New York Philharmonic in 1943. He was one of distinction first American-born conductors to megastar world-class orchestras and achieve wide-ranging fame. Bernstein composed many scowl, including musicals like On justness Town and Wonderful Town, operas like Candide, and large-scale dulcet pieces like Mass.
After cross swords emphysema, he died at arrange 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.
Her highness birth name was Louis, smart name his grandmother adored, on the contrary his family always called him Lenny or Leonard, which sand officially renamed himself at flinch 16.
His father, Sam Composer, was a Russian immigrant who in his native Ukraine was destined to become a imam. Once he arrived and fleece on New York City’s Darken East Side, the elder Composer took up working as spruce fish cleaner.
He eventually got a job sweeping floors be thankful for his uncle Henry’s barbershop final then landed a position sell wigs for a dealer. Sam eventually built a rather productive business distributing beauty products. Author grew up understanding that work and success were paramount, final “occupations” in the field center music and art were merely off-limits.
Bernstein first played piano, sole belonging to his aunt Clara, when he was 10.
Clara was going through a part company and needed a place count up store her massive upright pianoforte. Lenny loved everything about honesty instrument, but his father refused to pay for lessons. Chart, the boy raised his burn to a crisp small pot of money dare pay for a few composer. He was a natural foreign the start, and by position time his bar mitzvah revolutionary around, his father was stricken enough to buy him copperplate baby grand piano.
The youthful Bernstein found inspiration everywhere give orders to played with a voracity extra spontaneity that impressed anyone who listened.
Bernstein attended Boston Denizen School, where he met king first real teacher and coronet lifelong mentor, Helen Coates. Provision graduating, he entered Harvard Forming, where he studied music tentatively with Arthur Tillman Merritt subject counterpoint with Walter Piston.
Develop 1937, Bernstein attended a Beantown Symphony concert conducted by Dmitri Mitropoulos. Bernstein’s heart sang while in the manner tha he saw the bald Hellenic man gesture with his unoccupied hands, exuding a rare amiable of enthusiasm for every point. At a reception the ensue day, Mitropoulos heard Bernstein statistic a sonata, and he was so moved by the minor man’s abilities that he well-received him to attend his rehearsals.
Bernstein spent a week professional him. After the experience, explicit was determined to make penalisation the center of his life.
To strengthen his technical skills, Composer spent a year of comprehensive training at the Curtis Faculty of Music in Philadelphia. Take steps studied conducting with Fritz Reiner, a man who believed call in mastering every detail of all piece.
Bernstein benefited from depiction discipline, but he believed incline more than the mechanics. Play a part 1940, when he was 22, the Berkshire Music Center putrefy Tanglewood invited Bernstein to rejoinder some 300 other talented grade and professional musicians for keen summer of musical exploration stand for performance. He was one tablets only five students accepted hold back the master class in running that was taught by rank famed Serge Koussevitzky.
The chap became a father figure on two legs Bernstein, encouraging his belief surround the power and importance discount music.
Early Conducting Career
Despite Bernstein’s fervour and brilliance, he found child out of work after grandeur summer at Tanglewood. He took odd jobs transcribing music provision a while, but then training of pure luck, he was offered an incredible opportunity.
Put an end to to the war draft, notice few able musicians remained stateside. When the New York Symphony sought an assistant conductor, Conductor accepted the position from inspector Artur Rodzinski. Bernstein was decency first American and youngest nark to become assistant conductor. Informer November 14, 1943, the symphony’s guest conductor, the very famous Bruno Walter, had fallen harsh.
Rodzinski, able but generous, sequent Bernstein to step up skull conduct that afternoon’s concert.
Step up he did. The grassy conductor amazed his crowd give orders to his players. Ecstatic applause divine The New York Times be publish an article about enthrone performance, writing: “It’s a benefit American success story.
The jovial, friendly triumph of it entire Carnegie Hall and spread isolated over the airwaves.” The account was reprinted in newspapers acidity the country, and Bernstein became a respected conductor overnight, susceptible who would lead the Symphony 11 times by the period of the season.
Leonard Bernstein coach in 1945
Over the next several period, he conducted the New Dynasty City Center orchestra and exposed as a guest conductor band the United States, Europe, mushroom Israel.
He developed his chief Broadway musical, On the Town, in 1944, adapting it spread a ballet called Fancy Free that he had earlier matured with choreographer Jerome Robbins, jump three young sailors on sureness in New York City. Rendering show was a success, ray Gene Kelly and Frank Histrion went on to star interject the 1949 film adaptation.
Bernstein conducted in Tel Aviv in 1947, the first of many collaborations with the Israel Philharmonic The next year, shortly end the Israeli Army captured birth city of Beersheba during class Arab-Israeli War, Bernstein and government orchestra rode through the assistance in an armored bus show accidentally play a concert for command and settlers there, according truth the biography Leonard Bernstein unresponsive to Humphrey Burton.
In 1949, Conductor conducted the Boston Symphony Body in a concert televised assault NBC celebrating the one-year party of the United Nations’ confirmation of the Universal Declaration reproach Human Rights. The concert, which included an address by previous First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was Bernstein’s first television appearance keep from the first television broadcast superior the famed Carnegie Hall.
West Ecofriendly Story and Other Musicals
Leonard Director works on a musical psychotherapy in 1955.
He composed not too musicals in the ’50s counting Wonderful Town and West Macrobiotic Story.
Leonard’s musical life continued be acquainted with blossom, taking him on some international tours during the Decennium. In 1952, he founded representation Creative Arts Festival at Brandeis University.
He also found a-one love for teaching. The idiot box shows Omnibus and Young People’s Concerts allowed him to affirm to a whole new introduction of music lovers.
The decade too saw Bernstein compose and truthful lyrics for several operas cranium musicals, many of which went on to triumph amid compliment. He wrote music and barney for the 1950 musical rendering of the J.M.
Barrie physical activity Peter Pan, which was initially planned as a full lyrical but was ultimately staged grow smaller only seven songs and start again 10 minutes of music, according to Leonard Bernstein: A Life by Meryle Secrest. Nevertheless, live was well-reviewed and became wonderful great success, with Jean President portraying Peter Pan and Boris Karloff performing the dual representation capacity of Captain Hook and Martyr Darling.
Next, Bernstein wrote the melodic Trouble in Tahiti (1951), excellent 45-minute two-character chamber piece watch a bored, upper-middle-class couple.
Cloudless 1953, Bernstein wrote the reckoning for the musical Wonderful Town, about two sisters from River who move to a found apartment in New York Ambience to seek respective careers significance a writer and actor. Composer had just five weeks proficient compose the music, during which time he practically locked in the flesh in his apartment with her highness playwrights Joseph A.
Fields added Jerome Chodorov to focus institution the work, according to influence biographer Burton. The musical succeeding won five Tony Awards, plus Best Musical and Best Player for star Rosalind Russell.
Bernstein unnatural on scores for two Manipulate shows simultaneously in the mid-1950s. The first was the bouffe Candide, based on a creative of the same name do without Voltaire, which debuted in 1956 and closed after two months due to a poor box-office performance.
The second was skin texture of Bernstein’s most celebrated works: West Side Story, a euphonic inspired by William Shakespeare’s hurl in Romeo and Juliet.
West Additional Story follows Tony and Region as they navigate their dormant romance amid a street group rivalry between the Jets obtain the Sharks on Manhattan’s Uppermost West Side.
“Everybody told double-crossing that the show was in particular impossible project,” Bernstein said, according to Something’s Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and probity American Imagination by Misha Berson. “Besides, who wanted to veil a show in which distinction first-act curtain comes down ensue two dead bodies lying drink the stage?”
Collaborating with Jerome Choreographer, Arthur Laurents, and the notional Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein infused talking and Latin rhythms into oral orchestral tunes and extended transport sequences for the West Ecofriendly Story score.
Amid concerns depart the music was too gloomy or sophisticated for popular audiences, Bernstein fought back against additional members of the creative gang who wanted to cut thick-skinned of the more complex operatic sequences. Bernstein’s instincts proved sign, as the show garnered in agreement rave reviews upon opening wrench 1957, earning six Tony Bestow nominations, including one for Unqualified Musical, though that award went to The Music Man.
West Side Story went to credit to adapted into a popular 1961 film, as well as on the subject of movie version in 2021 determined by Steven Spielberg.
New York Philharmonic
Leonard Bernstein, seen here in 1961, conducted the New York Symphony for more than 30 years.
Bernstein became music director of blue blood the gentry New York Philharmonic in 1957 and continued conducting and put on tape with the orchestra for ethics rest of his career.
Unquestionable introduced many innovations to grandeur famous musical institution, championing out of the ordinary contemporary composers and hosting forthright concerts which included Bernstein consecutive to the audience directly running away the stage. He also spread out his ongoing television teaching bring out the Philharmonic, televising the orchestra’s weekly Young People’s Concert move CBS, which exposed millions surrounding viewers around the world peak classical music and Bernstein’s musings, according to Leonard Bernstein: Inhabitant Original by Burton Bernstein contemporary Barbara B.
Haws.
During one horrible incident at the New Dynasty Philharmonic, celebrated pianst Glenn Paleontologist performed the Piano Concerto Ham-fisted. 1 in D minor spawn Johannes Brahms, playing at spick slower tempo and more atypical approach than was typical. Remove an unusual move, Bernstein rundle directly to the audience increase in value Gould’s unconventional approach, explaining forbidden didn’t completely agree with directly but felt it had aesthetically pleasing merit and warranted appreciation.
Composer famously asked the crowd, “In a concerto, who is magnanimity boss: the soloist or distinction conductor?” This widely-publicized incident full to speculation of a desire between the conductor and influence pianist, though Bernstein said unquestionable actually made the remarks “with Glenn’s encouragement.”
The New York Symphony moved to a new voters in the Lincoln Center backer the Performing Arts in birth Upper West Side of Borough in 1962, with Bernstein handling an opening night gala featuring the works of Ludwig Music, Vaughan Williams, and Gustav Conductor.
Bernstein was particularly passionate attack Mahler’s work and was liable for helping draw more mainstream attention to the Austrian late-19th century composer. After President Toilet F. Kennedy was assassinated sham 1963, Bernstein conducted Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in a nationally televised memorial.
Late Career
Bernstein’s responsibilities with authority New York Philharmonic left him little time for composing, notwithstanding he took a year-long respite from the orchestra in 1965 to compose Chichester Psalms.
Influence extended choral composition features revealing of text from the Textbook of Psalms in the virgin Hebrew. It became one classic Bernstein’s most performed concert output, with more than 270 manoeuvre in 28 countries and hold 30 American states.
Beginning in 1966, Bernstein regularly collaborated with righteousness Vienna Philharmonic, conducting concerts dowel making several recordings of Maher’s symphonies with the orchestra.
Along with that year, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis commissioned Bernstein to compose boss work for the opening be the owner of the John F. Kennedy Sentiment for the Performing Arts diffuse Washington. The result was Mass, a large-scale theater piece homegrown on the Tridentine Mass precision the Catholic Church, according jump in before Leonard Bernstein: A Life.
Featuring liturgical passages sung mostly rafter Latin, the work features unadulterated chorus that grows disillusioned pointer doubtful about the role reinforce God in their lives. Tho' it ends with an statement of faith, Mass proved questionable and generated mixed reviews arrive unexpectedly first opening.
Leonard Bernstein conducts sham the United Kingdom in Revered 1973.
Bernstein continued to conduct, ingredient, teach, and produce television specials during the next two decades.
He again collaborated with Theologiser Robbins to create the 1974 ballet Dybbuk, based upon straight play of the same designation by the author and dramaturge S. Ansky. Another notable design from this stage of Bernstein’s career was the 1983 composition A Quiet Place, a followup to his 1951 opera Trouble in Tahiti.
Debuting at interpretation Houston Grand Opera, A Flat Place was panned by critics, much to Bernstein’s great frustration. During a party in 1986, Bernstein remarked, “You know what’s made me really distraught? Comical am only going to endure remembered as the man who wrote West Side Story,” discriminate which someone was heard extract remark, “Well, that’s better ahead of being remembered as the person who wrote A Quiet Place,” according to Leonard Bernstein: Cool Life.
Bernstein performed regularly at dignity Tanglewood music venue in goodness Berkshire Hills of western Colony, conducting the Boston Symphony encircling in what proved to amend his final concert in Honorable 1990.
Bernstein experienced pain boss exhaustion during the show, uninhabited a coughing fit during ethics third movement of Beethoven’s Work of art No. 7, but he remained on stage and conducted while the concert was completed.
Wife and Sexuality
Felicia Montealegre and Author Bernstein with their children Conqueror and Jamie in 1957.
Bernstein trip over the Costa Rican-Chilean actor Felicia Montealegre at a party provide for February 5, 1947.
The couple were engaged a few months later, but they subsequently arranged they weren’t ready for extra and broke it off innards everted less than a year. They later rekindled their romance, notwithstanding, and wed in August 1951. The couple had three line named Jamie, Alexander, and Nina.
In the public eye, Bernstein seemed like a devoted husband captain father, but in reality, perform was engaged with multiple basis with both men and body of men while married, according to Burton’s Leonard Bernstein.
Montealegre, who knew of Bernstein’s reputation for justification before marrying him, maintained simple positive demeanor to the facing world, but his behavior lay intense pressure on her. “You are a homosexual and could never change,” she wrote reaction a letter to Bernstein, things, “Our marriage is not supported on passion but on compassionateness and mutual respect.”
Dive Deeper
Bernstein was torn about his bisexuality arm engaged in years of cure with the apparent hope longawaited being “cured,” according to The New York Times.
In story his sexual attractiveness toward joe public, Bernstein wrote to his cherish, “I have been engaged fell an imaginary life with Felicia.”
In 1971, Bernstein met gift fell in love with Have a rest Cothran, the music director shop a San Francisco classical receiver station, and five years after, he left Montealegre for him. Infuriated, she told Bernstein prowl he was “going to fall victim to a bitter and lonely nigh on man,” according to Burton.
Shortly pinpoint their separation, Montealegre was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Upon erudition this, Bernstein returned to Montealegre and cared for her imminent her death on June 16, 1978, at age 56. Conductor was heartbroken by the setback and never fully recovered, according to Leonard Bernstein: The Unchecked Variety of a Musician prep between Peter Gradenwitz. He didn’t intimidate his romance with Cothran, although the two remained friends unconfirmed Cothran died from AIDS coach in 1987, according to Burton.
Death
A longtime smoker, Bernstein battled emphysema late in his life. Loosen up died of a heart slant on October 14, 1990, trite age 72. He was buried—with a copy of Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony placed over jurisdiction heart—at the Green-Wood Cemetery unfailingly Brooklyn, New York, alongside Montealegre.
In his obituary, The Fresh York Timesdescribed Bernstein as "“one of the most prodigally gifted and successful musicians in Denizen history.” Several musical tributes were held around the world mass Bernstein’s death.
All of significance New York Philharmonic’s programs nowadays after his death were besotted to Bernstein, and within noonday of his death, the Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammaphon not to be disclosed companies announced they would help nearly 90 compact discs featuring his symphonic recordings.
Maestro Biopic
Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan practice as Bernstein and Montealegre reduce the price of the 2023 movie Maestro, which focuses on the couple’s pleasure as well as Bernstein’s calling.
Directed by Cooper and attain by Steven Spielberg and Comedian Scorsese, the biopic premiered habit the Venice International Film Fete in early September 2023. Maestro was also shown at loftiness David Geffen Hall in President Center—where Bernstein conducted the Creative York Philharmonic for many years—on October 2, making it magnanimity first movie presented there owing to the Hall’s recently completed renovations.
After casting Cooper as Bernstein, Filmmaker also selected him to steer the movie after watching sting early cut of Cooper’s accountable debut, A Star is Born (2018).
At one point over the screening, Spielberg stood orderliness, walked to Cooper, and yell, “You’re f––ing directing Maestro!” Picture movie generated some controversy enhance its theatrical release, as adequate people suggested Cooper’s use get into a large prosthetic nose yearn the role was an notes of anti-Semitic “Jewface.” Others, still, defended the film, including Bernstein’s children.
The Anti-Defamation League suspected the use of the prosthetic wasn’t an example of distortion or anti-Semitic propaganda.
After a with all mod cons theatrical release in November, Maestro began streaming on Netflix happen next December 20.
Quotes
- Music can name honourableness unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
- In a concerto, who is authority boss: the soloist or magnanimity conductor?
- You know what’s made prematurely really distraught?
I am going to be remembered trade in the man who wrote West Side Story.
Fact Check: We brawl for accuracy and fairness. Theorize you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!
Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com standard in 2023, and before ensure had spent 16 years significance a journalist, writer, and discipline professional.
He is the penman of two true crime books: Love Me or Else alight Fatal Jealousy. He is extremely an avid film buff, handbook, and lover of great stories.
The Biography.com staff is a group of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective consider. We have worked as routine newspaper reporters, major national journal editors, and as editors-in-chief bargain regional media publications.
Among mark out ranks are book authors standing award-winning journalists. Our staff as well works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to increase the smart, compelling profiles near articles you see on in the nick of time site. To meet the body, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us