Leonard Bernstein
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Bernstein in the Desert March 20, 2024
Leonard Bernstein fell in love with the idea of Israel even before the state was established. The 27-year-old musical prodigy made his first trip to British Palestine in April of 1947, accompanied by his father, Samuel, and his sister Shirley. He had...
Can You Really Want an Oscar Too Much? March 01, 2024
On Valentine’s Day, Bradley Cooper strode onto the stage of Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall, flush with exuberance in his tux. “What we’re going to watch is an experiment,” he told the audience, which included Candice Bergen, Spike Lee, and Ellen ...
Leonard Bernstein Deserved Better Than ‘Maestro’ January 17, 2024
American musician Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) was, by any measure, an extraordinary talent—as composer, conductor, pianist, and teacher. He came of age in the 1940s, at a time when America was a safe haven for European musicians in flight from the ...
What Is a Bradley Cooper Film? January 10, 2024
“I always knew that I wanted to direct something,” Bradley Cooper explains in a featurette for A Star Is Born. “And I always wanted to tell a love story because it just feels like something that everybody can relate to.” Since then, Cooper has direct...
Scenes From a Marriage January 08, 2024
Bradley Cooper is a talented actor, and with his film Maestro (2023)—now streaming on Netflix—he has expanded his oeuvre. Cooper directed, co-wrote, and starred in a film about the American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. Any biopic is a gr...
Bradley Cooper Is Trying So Hard January 02, 2024
In several respects, Leonard Bernstein was a man split in two. Dreaming of becoming the first great American conductor but finding more success as a composer for Broadway musicals, he also struggled with his sexuality, marrying a woman he loved but r...
The Bernstein Children on ‘Maestro’ December 25, 2023
The interview takes place over three continents. There’s one virtual zoom window overlooking four living rooms: Two in New York, one in New Zealand, and one at THR Roma‘s office in Italy.Maestro, Bradley Cooper‘s take on the life, personal and profes...
“Maestro” Honors the Charisma of Leonard Bernstein December 21, 2023
In 1955, Leonard Bernstein explored the art of conducting on an episode of the CBS show “Omnibus.” After leading a studio orchestra through the opening bars of Brahms’s First Symphony, Bernstein walks away from the podium and turns to the camera, lea...
The Missing Love Story in 'Maestro' December 01, 2023
What do the sex lives of historical figures tell us that we don’t already know? What, for instance, do we stand to gain from learning that Marilyn Monroe called Arthur Miller “Daddy,” that Sanskrit made Oppenheimer horny, and Elvis saved himself for ...
Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein Biopic Is Fantastic December 01, 2023
One early scene in Bradley Cooper’s Maestro delivers the kind of creaky exposition a viewer might expect from a major biographical film arriving in the thick of Oscar season. A young Leonard Bernstein (played by Cooper) is at lunch with one of his me...
'Maestro' Is No Ordinary Biopic December 01, 2023
Bradley Cooper’s second film Maestro, like his 2018 debut A Star Is Born, tells the story of a passionate but turbulent romance conducted in the floodlight glare of entertainment-industry fame. Maestro also resembles A Star Is Born in that Cooper aga...
