The trailer has just landed for Maestro, an upcoming biopic about American composer Leonard Bernstein, directed by and starring Bradley Cooper.
The film will detail the life of Bernstein, one of America’s most successful musicians, focusing on his relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre, who will be played by Carey Mulligan.
In the trailer, sequences in both black and white and colour jump around in time, showing glimpses of the couple’s love story over the years. We see their initial meeting and first kiss, Bradley as Bernstein conducting a choir while his wife watches from a distance, and we see a few scenes where Bernstein is getting closer to a man. In one devastating moment Felicia stumbles across Bernstein at a party secretly embracing the same man.
Few words are said as the scenes change. Instead, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.5 in C-Sharp played by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein blasts over the top of the clip (Bernstein dedicated much of his career reviving the music of the 19th century composer). The 1 minute 30 second trailer opens and closes with the couple playing the same counting game together, decades apart.
“A love letter to life and art, Maestro at its core is an emotionally epic portrayal of family and love,” says the film’s logline.
Over the course of his stellar career, Massachusetts-born Bernstein won seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and 16 Grammy Awards. He was music director of the New York Philharmonic, and conducted concerts that were transmitted on television and on the radio, making him a national star. Most famously, Bernstein composed the music for the musical West Side Story, but he also wrote three symphonies, the score for the 1954 film On the Waterfront and music for theatre.
Felicia Montealegre was an actress and social activist, best known for performing in televised dramas in the Fifties. The duo married in 1951 when Felicia was 29 and Bernstein was 33 and they stayed married until her death in 1978 from lung cancer.
Bernstein reportedly had affairs with both men and women throughout his life. There are many documented conversations between friends, as well as with his wife, where he discusses his homosexuality.
The upcoming film is Cooper’s second solo directorial project. His directorial debut, 2018’s A Star Is Born, was a major success and picked up eight Oscar nominations.
Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are both producers of Maestro, and the script has been written by Bradley Cooper alongside Josh Singer, who won an Oscar for writing Spotlight (2015).
The film has a starry cast: Matt Bomer (Doom Patrol), Maya Hawke (Asteroid City), Sarah Silverman and Josh Hamilton (Reality) will join Cooper and Mulligan on screen.
Recently Cooper has starred in the American comedy-drama Licorice Pizza (2021) alongside Alana Haim, and as Rocket the raccoon in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023). He co-produced Todd Phillips’ 2019 mega-hit Joker, and he is co-producing the second chapter Joker: Folie à Deux, which is set to be released in October 2024.
Mulligan starred in Simon Stone’s 2021 drama The Dig, and in Maria Schrader’s 2022 thriller She Said, about the New York Times investigation into the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations.
