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On a late-spring day in 2018, when the New York Philharmonic was deep in rehearsals of a Strauss symphony, an unexpected visitor showed up at the stage door of David Geffen Hall, the Philharmonic\u2019s home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The visitor, Bradley Cooper<\/a>, the actor and director, had come on a mission. He was preparing to direct and star in a film about Leonard Bernstein, the eminent conductor and composer who led the Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969. He was asking the orchestra\u2019s leaders for help with the movie, \u201cMaestro<\/a>,\u201d which has its North American premiere on Monday at the New York Film Festival.<\/p>\n The Philharmonic is accustomed to having luminaries at its concerts. But it was unusual for someone like Cooper to express such deep interest in classical music, a field often neglected in popular culture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHow many top Hollywood stars can be genuine or interested in that way?\u201d said Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic\u2019s then-president and chief executive. \u201cWe were really impressed.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon, Cooper was a regular at the Philharmonic\u2019s concerts and rehearsals, sitting in the conductor\u2019s box in the second tier and peppering musicians with questions. He visited the orchestra\u2019s archives to examine Bernstein\u2019s scores and batons. And he joined Philharmonic staff members on a trip to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, placing a stone on Bernstein\u2019s grave, a Jewish rite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou could see that he was watching with a very special eye,\u201d said Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic\u2019s music director. \u201cHe wanted to get into Bernstein\u2019s soul.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooper\u2019s time with the Philharmonic was the beginning of an intense five-year period in which he immersed himself in classical music to portray Bernstein, the most influential American maestro<\/a> of the 20th century and a composer of renown, whose works include not just \u201cWest Side Story\u201d but music for the concert hall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He attended dozens of rehearsals and performances in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Berlin and at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. And he befriended top maestros, including van Zweden; Michael Tilson Thomas<\/a>, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Bernstein who led the San Francisco Symphony; Gustavo Dudamel<\/a>, who leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin<\/a>, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who served as the film\u2019s conducting consultant.<\/p>\n Cooper has portrayed musicians before: He took piano, guitar and voice lessons for his role as Jackson Maine, a folksy rock star, in the 2018 film \u201cA Star Is Born<\/a>,\u201d which he also directed.<\/p>\n But \u201cMaestro<\/a>,\u201d in theaters on Nov. 22 and on Netflix on Dec. 20, posed a new challenge. Bernstein was a larger-than-life figure with an exuberant style at the podium<\/a>. Cooper needed to learn not only to conduct, but also to captivate and seduce like a great maestro.<\/p>\n Cooper watched archival footage of Bernstein conducting, and N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin recorded dozens of videos on his phone in which he conducted in Bernstein\u2019s manner. He also sent play-by-play voice-overs of Bernstein\u2019s performances and assisted Cooper on set, sometimes guiding his conducting through an earpiece.<\/p>\n N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin said the biggest challenge for Cooper, as for many maestros, was \u201cfeeling unprotected\u201d and \u201cnaked emotionally\u201d on the podium. \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t settle for anything less than what he had in mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Cooper, who wrote \u201cMaestro\u201d with Josh Singer, declined to comment for this article because he belongs to the union representing striking actors<\/a>, which has forbidden<\/a> its members from promoting studio films. But in a discussion<\/a> last year with Cate Blanchett, who played the fictional maestro Lydia T\u00e1r<\/a> in \u201cT\u00e1r<\/a>\u201d (2022), he described conducting as \u201cthe most terrifying thing I\u2019ve ever experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He said that people often ask: \u201cWhat does a conductor even do? Aren\u2019t you just up there doing this?\u201d He waved his arms.<\/p>\n \u201cMy answer is it\u2019s the absolute hardest thing you could possibly ever want to do,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n Cooper grew up near Philadelphia surrounded by music. He played the double bass and showed an interest in conducting, inspired by portrayals of mischievous maestros in \u201cLooney Tunes\u201d and \u201cTom and Jerry\u201d cartoons. When he was 8, he asked Santa for a baton.<\/p>\n \u201cI was obsessed with conducting classical music,\u201d he told<\/a> Stephen Colbert on the \u201cLate Show\u201d last year. \u201cYou know you put your 10,000 hours in for something you never do? I did it for conducting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Steven Spielberg, who had been planning to direct \u201cMaestro,\u201d was aware of Cooper\u2019s obsession. He recalled Cooper telling him that \u201che\u2019d conduct whatever came out of their hi-fi system at home.\u201d<\/p>\n After a screening of \u201cA Star Is Born,\u201d Spielberg was so impressed that he decided to hand \u201cMaestro\u201d over to Cooper, with whom he shares a love of classical music.<\/p>\n \u201cIt only took me 15 minutes to realize this brilliant actor is equaled only by his skills as a filmmaker,\u201d said Spielberg, who produced the film, along with Cooper and Martin Scorsese.<\/p>\n Cooper worked to win the trust of the Bernstein family, including his children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, who gave the film permission to use their father\u2019s music. (\u201cMaestro\u201d beat out a rival Bernstein project<\/a> by the actor Jake Gyllenhaal.)<\/p>\n Jamie Bernstein said that Cooper seemed \u201ckeen to seek an essential authenticity about the story.\u201d He asked questions about her relationship with her father, and he was adept at imitating his gestures, like placing his hand on his hip as he conducted.<\/p>\n Cooper visited the family home<\/a> in Fairfield, Conn., admiring a Steinway piano that Bernstein used to play and examining his belongings: a bathrobe, a blue-striped djellaba, a bottle of German cough syrup that he brought back from a foreign tour.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe was just like a sponge soaking up every detail about our family\u2019s existence that he possibly could,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Cooper sent photos of himself in makeup and costumes, holding replicas of Bernstein\u2019s batons, to his children. (They defended<\/a> him recently when he drew criticism for wearing a large prosthetic nose in his portrayal of Bernstein, who was Jewish.)<\/p>\n At the gym, Cooper sometimes wore<\/a> a shirt emblazoned with the words \u201cHunky Brute,\u201d a nickname that Bernstein used for the New York Philharmonic\u2019s brass players. (Bernstein also wore a version<\/a> of the shirt.)<\/p>\n Bernstein\u2019s musical career unfolds in the background in \u201cMaestro\u201d; much of the film focuses on his conflicted identity, including his marriage to the actress Felicia Montealegre<\/a> (Carey Mulligan) and his dalliances with men.<\/p>\n Cooper was eager to approach \u201cMaestro\u201d less as a biography and more as the story of a marriage, Spielberg recalled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While Cooper understood Bernstein\u2019s genius, Spielberg said, he also had \u201can understanding of the complexities of Felicia\u2019s love for this man, whom she would certainly have to share not only with the world but also with his hungry heart.\u201d<\/p>\n The film, shot largely on location, recreates several moments from Bernstein\u2019s career, including his celebrated 1943 debut with the New York Philharmonic, when he filled in<\/a> at the last minute for the ailing conductor Bruno Walter at Carnegie Hall<\/a>.<\/p>\n At Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra\u2019s summer home in the Berkshires, Cooper\u2019s Bernstein is shown leading master classes and driving a sports car with the license plate MAESTRO1 across a pristine lawn as the real Bernstein had done. He visits his mentor, the Russian conductor and composer Serge Koussevitzky, who suggests he change his surname to Burns to avoid discrimination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In his conducting studies, Cooper spent the most time with Dudamel and N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin. He visited Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, dressed and made up as Bernstein, for sessions with Dudamel. And he traveled to Germany, score in hand, to observe Dudamel as he rehearsed Mahler\u2019s \u201cResurrection\u201d Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. (Dudamel declined to comment because he is also a member of the actors\u2019 union.)<\/p>\n Cooper stealthily watched<\/a> N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin from the orchestra pit at the Met, including at a 2019 performance of Debussy\u2019s \u201cPell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande.\u201d Later that year, for Bernstein\u2019s 100th birthday, N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin invited Cooper and Mulligan to narrate a staging<\/a> of Bernstein\u2019s operetta \u201cCandide\u201d with the Philadelphia Orchestra.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin said he didn\u2019t set out to give Cooper conducting lessons but to refine his portrayals. \u201cI had to take what he already did as an actor,\u201d he said, \u201cand make it into a frame that was believable.\u201d<\/p>\n N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, who also conducts the film\u2019s soundtrack, helped him find the downbeat for Schumann\u2019s \u201cManfred\u201d overture, which opened the Carnegie program in 1943. And he assisted Cooper with dialogue for a rehearsal scene of \u201cCandide,\u201d during which he conducts with a cigarette in his mouth.<\/p>\n Last fall, Cooper and N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin traveled to Ely Cathedral in England to recreate a 1973 performance of Mahler\u2019s \u201cResurrection\u201d Symphony by Bernstein and the London Symphony Orchestra, a climactic moment in the film.<\/p>\n Cooper, who chose the music in \u201cMaestro,\u201d had studied the piece intensely, watching Bernstein\u2019s performance as well as videos in which N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin dissected Bernstein\u2019s gestures and explained how to count beats.<\/p>\n \u201cHe would watch the videos,\u201d N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin said, \u201cand then text me and say, \u2018Hey, can we talk about this or that moment?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Inside an empty Ely Cathedral, N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, wearing a sweater that had belonged to Bernstein, coached Cooper as he rehearsed an eight-minute section of the piece with a recording.<\/p>\n When the London Symphony Orchestra arrived, Cooper watched as N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin 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.<\/p>\n When Cooper took the podium, N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin provided occasional direction through an earpiece, advising him to hold onto a moment or let go.<\/p>\n The musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra were startled by Cooper\u2019s transformation. \u201cIt was uncanny,\u201d said Sarah Quinn, a violinist in the orchestra. \u201cIt was just kind of a double take.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout his work on \u201cMaestro,\u201d Cooper maintained a connection to the New York Philharmonic, soliciting stories about Bernstein. Van Zweden, who worked with Bernstein in Amsterdam in the 1980s, told him how Bernstein had broken protocol and hugged Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, calling her \u201cdarling\u201d and taking a sip of his drink at the same time.<\/p>\n Cooper visited Geffen Hall last fall after its $550 million renovation<\/a>, attending a rehearsal of Beethoven\u2019s Ninth Symphony and flipping through a Mahler score that had belonged to Bernstein. He returned in February when Dudamel was introduced<\/a> as the Philharmonic\u2019s next music director, embracing him and admiring a photo of Bernstein.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Over the summer, Cooper invited a few Philharmonic staff members and musicians to his Greenwich Village townhouse for screenings of \u201cMaestro.\u201d The orchestra presented him with a gift: a replica of Bernstein\u2019s Carnegie debut program.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the beginning, he was intent on avoiding a broad burlesque of a personality, especially one as big as Bernstein\u2019s,\u201d said Carter Brey, the orchestra\u2019s principal cellist, who attended a screening.<\/p>\n Cooper has compared playing Bernstein to \u201cchanneling a supernova.\u201d He said in a recorded Zoom conversation with Jamie Bernstein last year that her father transmitted his soul through conducting.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d he said in the video. \u201cWhat a person. What a spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n