Leonard Bernstein Biography
Leonard Bernstein was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian.
Leonard Bernstein who inspired an entire generation with his music ensembles and symphony orchestras, was one of the most influential classical musicians of the last century.
An influential teacher, a brilliant conductor, a fine composer, and an accomplished pianist, Leonard Bernstein was a musician of rare talent who wowed his young fans with his flamboyant style and pedagogic flair.
In fact, he was the most dominant classical musician of his times who influenced the musical scene of his day more than his peers did. As said by one of the veterans, “When he gets up on the podium, he makes me remember why I wanted to become a musician.
No 20th century musician had as towering yet controversial career as Leonard Bernstein. His contribution to the realms of music is indeed unsurpassable. His music was deeply inspired by the people of America.
No other musician succeeded in arresting the attention of entire America as much as Bernstein did with his television shows. His musical concerts were not only appeasing to the ears, but were an inspiration for every mind.
Even after he passed away his works still continue to remain popular and are performed all over the world.
Leonard Bernstein Age
Leonard Bernstein was 72 years old when he died on October 14, 1990. He was born on August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
His parents, Samuel and Jennie, were Jewish, and they immigrated to the U.S. from Rivne, which used to be in Poland but is now part of Ukraine.
Bernstein’s grandmother wanted his first name to be Louis, but his parents called him Leonard and he legally charged his name when he turned 18.
He grew up in Boston with younger siblings Burton and Shirley, and his father owned The Samuel Bernstein Hair and Beauty Supply Company.
When Leonard was 10 years old, his aunt moved her piano to the Bernstein home, and Leonard began teaching himself how to play and later took piano lessons.
As a teenager, he went to orchestral concerts with his father, and in 1932, he gave his first public performance, playing Brahms’ “Rhapsody in G minor” during a recital at the New England Conservatory.
Bernstein attended the William Lloyd Garrison School and the Boston Latin School, then he studied music at Harvard College, where he served as a pianist for the Harvard Glee Club as well as the Harvard Film Society’s presentations of silent films.
He graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1939, then he enrolled at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied piano, conducting, orchestration, counterpoint, and score reading.
Leonard later studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s music director, and worked as Koussevitzky’s conducting assistant at the Tanglewood Music Center.
Leonard Bernstein Net Worth
Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, pianist, and music lecturer who had a net worth of $10 million at the time of his death in 1990. That’s the same as around $22 million in today’s dollars.
Leonard Bernstein Wife
Leonard Bernstein had one wife, Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, who was a Costa Rican actress and author. They married in 1951. He was thirty-three; she was twenty-nine.
Montealegre was raised in Chile; her mother was Costa Rican and Catholic; her father, an American Jew, was a wealthy industrialist.
A South American aristocrat who became socially ambitious in America, Felicia was an accomplished actress with an elevated elocutionary style that was losing favor to so-called naturalistic modes; she was good at narrating oratorios.
Bernstein was romantically involved with both women and men throughout his life, and Felicia once wrote in a letter to him, “You are a homos*xual and may never change — you don’t admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain s*xual pattern what can you do?”
In 1976, Leonard left Felicia to live with music scholar Tom Cothran in Northern California, but he returned to her the following year after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he stayed with her until her death in June 1978.
Leonard Bernstein Children
They had three children: Jamie, who is now sixty-five; a boy, Alexander, and another girl, Nina, followed. Jamie says that her father was an ardent family man, attentive, affectionate, an unending didact who crammed his kids with poetry, music, Hebrew lessons.
Leonard Bernstein Death and Legacy
Leonard died of a heart attack in his New York City apartment on October 14, 1990, five days after he announced that he was retiring from conducting. He was 72 years old at the time of his death, and his heart attack was caused by mesothelioma. Bernstein developed emphysema in his mid-50s as a result of his heavy smoking.
He was laid to rest next to Felicia at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, and according to “The New York Times,” he “was buried with the score of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony placed over his heart.” To celebrate what would’ve been Leonard’s 100th birthday, L.A.’s Skirball Cultural Center presented the exhibition “Leonard Bernstein at 100” in 2018. Curated by the GRAMMY Museum, the exhibition featured more than 150 objects, including “photographs, personal items, papers, scores, correspondence, costumes, furniture, and audio and video recordings.”
In September 2023, the film “Maestro,” which is about the relationship between Leonard and Felicia, premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it earned a nomination for Best Film. In the film, Leonard is played by Bradley Cooper, who also co-wrote and directed the film as well as producing it alongside Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
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