Bradley Cooper will face the genius Leonard Bernstein in a Netflix series: this was “the total musician”

The first signs came with a photograph in which someone very similar, if not himself, to Leonard Bernstein, the exuberant musical genius who marked an era in the second half of the 20th century as conductor, composer and activist for all kinds of causes. And no, it was not the creator of west side storyif not the actor Bradley Cooperwho will be in charge of bringing it to life in one of the most anticipated productions – they say – of next year under the Netflix label.

But in this age of rappers capable of adding 20 million views with a single song with little effort, is there anyone left out there who can still remember what it was? Bernstein’s place in American cultural lifebeyond the fact that one of the most popular faces in Hollywood is now going to interpret it?

The legacy of the “total musician”

Leonard Bernstein (United States, 1918-1990) embodied the same music with a contagious vitality. He was the total musician, oblivious to the foolish specialization that would be imposed years later. «I like everything about music, that’s why in my passport I only put the word ‘musician’he said on one occasion.

Child prodigy, or at least gifted, his vocation was sealed for an early hearing Seventh Symphony of Beethoven, the one that some exegete named as «Apology of the dance». From there, perhaps, Bernstein would derive his spectacular sense of rhythm, that joyful impulse, pure celebration of life, that all his creations express so well.

When he played the piano or, above all, directed, when he deciphered his most hidden enigmas with a language accessible to anyone through television in those pioneering educational programs with which he seduced millions of early viewers, when he created his own compositions, when he recorded for the first time a then almost virgin repertoire, the sounds came to life with extraordinary eloquence. She sweat notes.

Conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein in concert in the 1960sGtres Online

Few had heard of Mahler until Bernstein began to impose it in the programs of his concerts and to record the complete of his symphonies (unsurpassed his versions of the Third and the Sixth). And even less was known about his compatriots Virgil Thompson, Samuel Barber, Walter Piston or Charles Iveswhom he favored from his privileged position, as the great musical figure of his country at the head of the New York Philharmonic or triumphing with his own creations in Hollywood and Broadway (On the town, The law of silence, West side story), to publicize their works.

The son of Jewish immigrants who came to the new world from Russia, Bernstein received a careful education in temples of knowledge such as Harvard and the impulse of some of the greatest men of music of his time, Europeans who had also emigrated, such as directors Fritz Reiner, in the Curtis Institute; Serge Koussevitsky, at Tanglewood, or Dmitri Mitropoulos at the New York Philharmonic, who not only knew how to gauge his talent, but also provided him with the opportunities that allowed him to develop it to exceptional heights.

Anxiety Era Portrait

Not by chance, Bernstein used one of the essential works of the poet W. H. Auden, the time of anxietyas inspiration for your Second Symphony. That overflowing energy, the urgent passion that his performances conveyed (and that have later been badly copied by some director-acrobats, imitators in form but not substance) did not prevent him from capturing with extraordinary lucidity in his own works, attitudes and personal opinions. the evils of his time: the discouragement, the spiritual crisis, the fears and the contradictions of a complex society that he himself dragged as bisexual.

Married to a fascinating woman, Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre, together with one of the most glamorous couples in New York, also had numerous intermittent relationships with several of his male collaborators in places like Spain –sometimes he sought refuge in the Canary Islands for his adventures. In his magnificent biography of genius (Leonard BernsteinPhaidon, 1998), Paul Myers goes so far as to affirm that he had been “more faithful to the New York Philharmonic (with whom he had an intense relationship for most of his life) than to his wife.”

The liberal Bernstein was a well-informed optimist who often sided with less popular causes, as when he threw a party at his Upper East Side apartment for the leader of the black panthers, a meeting that was later recreated by another of the guests at this social event, the famous writer Tom Wolfeand that cost him a lot of criticism for having given shelter to members of what was considered a terrorist group.

Firm opponent of Maccarthyism and what his “witch hunt” meant, contrary to the Vietnam War and to any regime that curtailed freedoms, finding Fidelius among his leading operas, he was the natural guest to direct the famous Reunification concert after the fall of the wall in Berlin. The recorded testimony of that reading of the Ninth of Beethoven with an orchestra created ad-hoc by musicians from various formations and the change of the word Freude (Joy) for Freiheit (Freedom), suggested by Bernstein himself for the Ode by Schiller, will forever remain one of the most intense interpretations of this pinnacle of artistic creation due to the authority emanating from the director, a true humanist and one of the fundamental musicians of the convulsive 20th century, here himself erected as a messenger of noblest human aspiration.

Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper in a still from the Netflix adaptation of the life of Leonard Bernstein

We will have to hope that Bradley Cooper and Netflix know how to do it justice. At least it already seems worthy of all praise that the popular platform focuses on a leading figure in American culture, and that this gesture is accompanied by the decision to use one of the main current actors to embody it. Surely many will bite even out of curiosity or out of unconditional love for his idol, the protagonist of A star has been born either Hangover in Las Vegas. It all adds up.

We wish to give thanks to the author of this short article for this remarkable material

Bradley Cooper will face the genius Leonard Bernstein in a Netflix series: this was “the total musician”