Very emotional: Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic c. 1941 Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The new Netflix biopic The Maestro, about the great American conductor Leonard Bernstein, has always been controversial. This was a man who was blatantly over the top in every way: his highly emotional (some would say hyperemotional) conducting, his writing for both Broadway and the concert hall—a career that had both ecstatic highs and embarrassing lows—his insatiable bisexuality (or was it outright homosexuality?), and, most controversially, his political activism in favor of fashionable causes such as the Black Panthers. Not surprisingly, Bernstein admitted: “I'm too busy on all fronts.”
Bernstein's biopic could be “mistaken” on any of these topics, but what's already stirred up a hornet's nest is the fact that this ostensibly Jewish conductor is played by an ostentatiously gentile American actor, Bradley Cooper. A newly released trailer shows Cooper wearing a prosthetic nose, causing the Hollywood Reporter to call the film “ethnic cosplay.” Actress and activist Tracey-Anne Oberman stated on social media that “if [Cooper] needs to wear a prosthetic nose, it's…the equivalent of Blackface or Yellowface.”
The three Bernstein children, who collaborated with the filmmakers at every stage, disagree. They released a joint statement saying they were “touched to the core to see the depth of [Bradley's] commitment”, adding that their father “had a beautiful big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to accentuate his likeness, and we're fine with that. We are also sure that our father would have liked it too.”
All this may be true, but this is unlikely to be the end of the story. When the film releases later this year, it could explode again, because Bernstein's Jewishness is complex and can be portrayed in many ways.
He certainly had deep roots going back to Bernstein's childhood when his father Sam took him to a big conservative synagogue in their corner of New Jersey. In later years, Sam recalled how his son was moved to tears upon hearing the ritual music and recitative and felt that his son's manner of speaking was modeled after a certain rabbi.
Bradley Cooper wearing a prosthetic nose (left) and Leonard Bernstein
Bernstein always kept a sense of the Hebrew language, which he installed more than once musically and for synagogue melodies, which the composer used in several works, including the Jeremiah Symphony and three works actually composed for liturgical use in the synagogue.
However, Bernstein's attachment to his Jewish roots went far beyond the aesthetic appeal of the Hebrew language and melodies. He was excited about the founding of the State of Israel and made two visits to the country to conduct the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, which had been renamed the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra by the time of his second visit in 1948.
He was fascinated by what he saw. “How to start?” he said in an enthusiastic letter to the great conductor and mentor Sergei Kusevitsky. “Of all the glorious facts, faces, deeds, ideals, beauties of scenery, nobility of purpose, should I report? I am simply amazed by this land, its people. I have never been so famous for the army, simple peasants, concert audiences … Believe me, this will end well: too much faith, spirit and will to be otherwise.”
Although Bernstein was fiercely true to his Jewish roots and, as a young man, refused suggestions from his friends to change his name to something less Jewish, such as “Burns”, he could at times appear naïve about his own role as a Jewish figurehead. For decades, he had an affair with the Vienna Philharmonic, despite the fact that Vienna was often considered the most anti-Semitic city in Europe.
However, Bernstein's relationship with Judaism itself and with the object of religious faith in general was much more complex. “The work that I have been writing all my life,” he said in 1977, “is dedicated to the struggle generated by the crisis of our age, the crisis of faith.” This crisis is vividly expressed in the music of another great Jewish composer, Gustav Mahler, and no doubt that is why Bernstein was so obsessed with Mahler's music and worked so hard to popularize it.
Jamie Bernstein (right), pictured with his father Leonard circa 1950s, protecting Bradley Cooper during prosthetics nose Credit: Bettmann
His own particular crisis manifested itself in an almost angry relationship with a God who demands so much from his chosen people and yet hides his face. In Bernstein's Kaddish symphony, which premiered in Tel Aviv in 1963, there is an unusual moment when the Speaker accuses God of breaking his covenant with humanity. It seems like a moment of blasphemy, but it is a feature of Judaism, reflected in stories such as the plagues sent to torment Job, that people should fight closely with the deity as well as worship Him.
And yet Bernstein, who composed this harrowing work was a rebel in his youth, merrily eating candy at Passover and eating an “impure” oyster at lunch with Dimitri Mitropoulos, his other conducting mentor and possibly also his lover. In many ways, Bernstein's Jewish background was the key to his complex, troubled personality. Let's hope that the Maestro will be more tactful about this than Bernstein's nose shape, otherwise the film may again be embroiled in controversy.
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