Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan shine in this intimate telling of the relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre

Much of the film Maestro is shot in black and white, but it opens in full colour. “I miss her terribly,” the older Leonard Bernstein says, of his late wife Felicia. At the piano he plays 'Postlude' (adeptly performed by Bradley Cooper), from his opera A Quiet Place, where the son mourns the loss of his mother. An appropriate choice, because Felicia Montealegre Cohn was not just a wife and friend to Bernstein, but a surrogate mother too. At one point she calls him “that child of mine”. Felicia sacrificed her own acting career and something of herself in order to be Mrs Maestro. She has not suffered the same fate in this film. Carey Mulligan as Felicia is luminous and has top billing in the cast list, but there are three stars in this production: Carey Mulligan, Bradley Cooper, and the music.

The music delights; there is Mahler, Schuman, Walton, Beethoven and snippets of pop songs. Bernstein’s own creations soar throughout the movie. Cooper’s dedication impresses too. Not only did he co-write, co-produce and direct the film, he also spent six years rehearsing to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra live for six minutes and 21 seconds of Mahler. It is worth sitting through the final credits to see the original footage of Bernstein conducting and to hear, at the very end, the Din-Torah from Kaddish, his third symphony.

There was criticism from the Hispanic community that British actor Carey Mulligan was chosen to play Bernstein’s Costa-Rican wife; in fact, Felicia’s father was an American Jew. Ethnic casting is a sensitive issue: in 1958, Danny Kaye turned down the role of Noel Airman in Marjorie Morningstar, considering it “too Jewish” (Gene Kelly took it up instead). Maestro met with controversy over a non-Jew donning a false nose to look more like the composer, yet Cooper’s Bernstein convinces us, not just with Kiri Hiro’s prosthetics, but through stance and movement and the voice that deepens and changes over the years. Josh Singer, Cooper’s co-writer, is Jewish and there is no antisemitism in this film, except for its acknowledged existence in American society: Bernstein was advised to change his surname to Burns.

There were other struggles too. When Bernstein reassures his teenage daughter Jamie that the rumours about his sexuality are not true, he wears a t-shirt inscribed with the name of Harvard in Hebrew letters. The denial was false. By this time, Bernstein’s homosexual dalliances were less discreet and had become the subject of gossip. His three children discovered the truth later. Felicia knew from the beginning, but she still chose to marry him.

The film makes no mention of Bernstein’s political daring and his involvement in the civil rights movement; he supported and promoted black musicians and conductors and marched in Selma with Harry Belafonte. For today’s audiences, that may seem more relevant than the marriage of a gay man to a woman. “You and I are able to be many things at once,” Bernstein tells Felicia. “That’s how we survive”. The film reveals some of the contradictions of a creative genius, a man capable of enormous affection for many people; who tells Felicia that, as a child, he fantasised about killing his cruel father. It portrays Bernstein and Felicia’s complicated relationship that, despite its challenges and her disappointment, was filled with love and often joyous.

By Irene Wise

Maestro is out now in select cinemas and available to stream on Netflix from Wednesday 20 December. netflix.com