Conducting Lessons: How Bradley Cooper Became Leonard Bernstein

On a late-spring day in 2018, when the New York Philharmonic was deep in rehearsals of a Strauss symphony, an surprising customer confirmed up on the stage door of David Geffen Hall, the Philharmonic’s dwelling.

The customer, Bradley Cooper, the actor and director, had come on a mission. He was making ready to direct and star in a movie about Leonard Bernstein, the eminent conductor and composer who led the Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969. He was asking the orchestra’s leaders for assist with the film, “Maestro,” which has its North American premiere on Monday on the New York Film Festival.

The Philharmonic is accustomed to having luminaries at its concert events. But it was uncommon for somebody like Cooper to specific such deep curiosity in classical music, a subject typically uncared for in in style tradition.

“How many top Hollywood stars can be genuine or interested in that way?” stated Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s then-president and chief government. “We were really impressed.”

Soon, Cooper was an everyday on the Philharmonic’s concert events and rehearsals, sitting within the conductor’s field within the second tier and peppering musicians with questions. He visited the orchestra’s archives to look at Bernstein’s scores and batons. And he joined Philharmonic workers members on a visit to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, putting a stone on Bernstein’s grave, a Jewish ceremony.

“You could see that he was watching with a very special eye,” stated Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director. “He wanted to get into Bernstein’s soul.”

Cooper’s time with the Philharmonic was the start of an intense five-year interval by which he immersed himself in classical music to painting Bernstein, probably the most influential American maestro of the twentieth century and a composer of renown, whose works embrace not simply “West Side Story” however music for the live performance corridor.

He attended dozens of rehearsals and performances in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Berlin and at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. And he befriended prime maestros, together with van Zweden; Michael Tilson Thomas, a protégé of Bernstein who led the San Francisco Symphony; Gustavo Dudamel, who leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who served because the movie’s conducting guide.

Cooper has portrayed musicians earlier than: He took piano, guitar and voice classes for his position as Jackson Maine, a folksy rock star, within the 2018 movie “A Star Is Born,” which he additionally directed.

But “Maestro,” in theaters on Nov. 22 and on Netflix on Dec. 20, posed a brand new problem. Bernstein was a larger-than-life determine with an exuberant fashion on the podium. Cooper wanted to be taught not solely to conduct, but additionally to captivate and seduce like an ideal maestro.

Cooper watched archival footage of Bernstein conducting, and Nézet-Séguin recorded dozens of movies on his telephone by which he carried out in Bernstein’s method. He additionally despatched play-by-play voice-overs of Bernstein’s performances and assisted Cooper on set, generally guiding his conducting by an earpiece.

Nézet-Séguin stated the largest problem for Cooper, as for a lot of maestros, was “feeling unprotected” and “naked emotionally” on the rostrum. “He wouldn’t settle for anything less than what he had in mind.”

Cooper, who wrote “Maestro” with Josh Singer, declined to remark for this text as a result of he belongs to the union representing placing actors, which has forbidden its members from selling studio movies. But in a dialogue final 12 months with Cate Blanchett, who performed the fictional maestro Lydia Tár in “Tár” (2022), he described conducting as “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.”

He stated that folks typically ask: “What does a conductor even do? Aren’t you just up there doing this?” He waved his arms.

“My answer is it’s the absolute hardest thing you could possibly ever want to do,” he stated. “It is impossible.”

Cooper grew up close to Philadelphia surrounded by music. He performed the double bass and confirmed an curiosity in conducting, impressed by portrayals of mischievous maestros in “Looney Tunes” and “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. When he was 8, he requested Santa for a baton.

“I was obsessed with conducting classical music,” he informed Stephen Colbert on the “Late Show” final 12 months. “You know you put your 10,000 hours in for something you never do? I did it for conducting.”

Steven Spielberg, who had been planning to direct “Maestro,” was conscious of Cooper’s obsession. He recalled Cooper telling him that “he’d conduct whatever came out of their hi-fi system at home.”

After a screening of “A Star Is Born,” Spielberg was so impressed that he determined handy “Maestro” over to Cooper, with whom he shares a love of classical music.

“It only took me 15 minutes to realize this brilliant actor is equaled only by his skills as a filmmaker,” stated Spielberg, who produced the movie, together with Cooper and Martin Scorsese.

Cooper labored to win the belief of the Bernstein household, together with his kids, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, who gave the movie permission to make use of their father’s music. (“Maestro” beat out a rival Bernstein venture by the actor Jake Gyllenhaal.)

Jamie Bernstein stated that Cooper appeared “keen to seek an essential authenticity about the story.” He requested questions on her relationship along with her father, and he was adept at imitating his gestures, like putting his hand on his hip as he carried out.

Cooper visited the household dwelling in Fairfield, Conn., admiring a Steinway piano that Bernstein used to play and analyzing his belongings: a bathrobe, a blue-striped djellaba, a bottle of German cough syrup that he introduced again from a overseas tour.

“He was just like a sponge soaking up every detail about our family’s existence that he possibly could,” she stated.

Cooper despatched photographs of himself in make-up and costumes, holding replicas of Bernstein’s batons, to his kids. (They defended him not too long ago when he drew criticism for sporting a big prosthetic nostril in his portrayal of Bernstein, who was Jewish.)

At the fitness center, Cooper generally wore a shirt emblazoned with the phrases “Hunky Brute,” a nickname that Bernstein used for the New York Philharmonic’s brass gamers. (Bernstein additionally wore a model of the shirt.)

Bernstein’s musical profession unfolds within the background in “Maestro”; a lot of the movie focuses on his conflicted identification, together with his marriage to the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) and his dalliances with males.

Cooper was desperate to strategy “Maestro” much less as a biography and extra because the story of a wedding, Spielberg recalled.

While Cooper understood Bernstein’s genius, Spielberg stated, he additionally had “an understanding of the complexities of Felicia’s love for this man, whom she would certainly have to share not only with the world but also with his hungry heart.”

The movie, shot largely on location, recreates a number of moments from Bernstein’s profession, together with his celebrated 1943 debut with the New York Philharmonic, when he crammed in on the final minute for the ailing conductor Bruno Walter at Carnegie Hall.

At Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer season dwelling within the Berkshires, Cooper’s Bernstein is proven main grasp courses and driving a sports activities automobile with the license plate MAESTRO1 throughout a pristine garden as the true Bernstein had executed. He visits his mentor, the Russian conductor and composer Serge Koussevitzky, who suggests he change his surname to Burns to keep away from discrimination.

In his conducting research, Cooper spent probably the most time with Dudamel and Nézet-Séguin. He visited Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, dressed and made up as Bernstein, for classes with Dudamel. And he traveled to Germany, rating in hand, to watch Dudamel as he rehearsed Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. (Dudamel declined to remark as a result of he’s additionally a member of the actors’ union.)

Cooper stealthily watched Nézet-Séguin from the orchestra pit on the Met, together with at a 2019 efficiency of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.” Later that 12 months, for Bernstein’s one centesimal birthday, Nézet-Séguin invited Cooper and Mulligan to narrate a staging of Bernstein’s operetta “Candide” with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Nézet-Séguin stated he didn’t got down to give Cooper conducting classes however to refine his portrayals. “I had to take what he already did as an actor,” he stated, “and make it into a frame that was believable.”

Nézet-Séguin, who additionally conducts the movie’s soundtrack, helped him discover the downbeat for Schumann’s “Manfred” overture, which opened the Carnegie program in 1943. And he assisted Cooper with dialogue for a rehearsal scene of “Candide,” throughout which he conducts with a cigarette in his mouth.

Last fall, Cooper and Nézet-Séguin traveled to Ely Cathedral in England to recreate a 1973 efficiency of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony by Bernstein and the London Symphony Orchestra, a climactic second within the movie.

Cooper, who selected the music in “Maestro,” had studied the piece intensely, watching Bernstein’s efficiency in addition to movies by which Nézet-Séguin dissected Bernstein’s gestures and defined learn how to rely beats.

“He would watch the videos,” Nézet-Séguin stated, “after which textual content me and say, ‘Hey, can we talk about this or that moment?”

Inside an empty Ely Cathedral, Nézet-Séguin, wearing a sweater that had belonged to Bernstein, coached Cooper as he rehearsed an eight-minute section of the piece with a recording.

When the London Symphony Orchestra arrived, Cooper watched as Nézet-Séguin rehearsed in the style of Bernstein, who often broke the rules of conducting with his animated gestures. Sometimes, Cooper offered suggestions, such as adding tremolo in the strings.

When Cooper took the podium, Nézet-Séguin provided occasional direction through an earpiece, advising him to hold onto a moment or let go.

The musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra were startled by Cooper’s transformation. “It was uncanny,” stated Sarah Quinn, a violinist within the orchestra. “It was just kind of a double take.”

Throughout his work on “Maestro,” Cooper maintained a connection to the New York Philharmonic, soliciting tales about Bernstein. Van Zweden, who labored with Bernstein in Amsterdam within the Eighties, informed him how Bernstein had damaged protocol and hugged Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, calling her “darling” and taking a sip of his drink on the similar time.

Cooper visited Geffen Hall final fall after its $550 million renovation, attending a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and flipping by a Mahler rating that had belonged to Bernstein. He returned in February when Dudamel was launched because the Philharmonic’s subsequent music director, embracing him and admiring a photograph of Bernstein.

Over the summer season, Cooper invited just a few Philharmonic workers members and musicians to his Greenwich Village townhouse for screenings of “Maestro.” The orchestra offered him with a present: a reproduction of Bernstein’s Carnegie debut program.

“From the beginning, he was intent on avoiding a broad burlesque of a personality, especially one as big as Bernstein’s,” stated Carter Brey, the orchestra’s principal cellist, who attended a screening.

Cooper has in contrast taking part in Bernstein to “channeling a supernova.” He stated in a recorded Zoom dialog with Jamie Bernstein final 12 months that her father transmitted his soul by conducting.

“The pilot light never went out with him, which is incredible given everything that he saw, experienced, understood, comprehended, bore witness to, even within his own self,” he stated within the video. “What a person. What a spirit.”

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.