August 15, 2023
Watch: Teaser Trailer Drops For Bradley Cooper's 'Maestro'
READ TIME: 2 MIN.
The advance photos of Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in the upcoming film "Maestro" show an uncanny resemblance between the actor and the great American conductor, whose career was mired with controversies and secrets. Those secrets centered on rumors of his homosexuality, which led to him leaving his wife, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (played by Carey Mulligan), and move in with a male companion in 1976. He later returned and cared for her when she was dying of cancer.
The teaser trailer only alludes to Bernstein's personal struggles and artistic triumphs as quick scenes from the film are intercut with the couple conversing in a bucolic setting that suggests Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony, an orchestra with a conflicted relationship with the conductor, composer, and influencer.
Not surprisingly, it is one of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler's best-known works – the Adagietto to his Fifth Symphony – that accompanies the teaser trailer. It was famously used in Luchino Visconti's 1970 film "Death in Venice." Bernstein also is thought of as being a huge influence in rediscovering the works of Mahler, whose symphonies were largely ignored for the first half of the 20th century.
"The trailer introduces the married couple in their younger years, where they are seated back-to-back and playing an apparent game in which Bernstein (Cooper) has to guess which number Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (Mulligan) has selected," the Hollywood Reporter said. "After a number of erroneous picks, Bernstein asks, 'So how long do we have to do this for?' This leads Montealegre Cohn Bernstein to lightheartedly reply, 'Oh, we need to build up a very strong connection.'"
The trailer then cuts to the couple, no older with Bernstein choosing the number, establishing that the film will focus on their tumultuous relationship, which began when they were married in 1951 and lasted to her death in 1978.
"Maestro" hits theaters on November 22, 2023 prior to hitting Netflix on December 20.
