Director/ Producer/ Co-writer/ Star Bradley Cooper introduced a special concert at the newly refurbished Geffen Hall, featuring the NY Philharmonic performing Leonard Bernstein’s music for his film MAESTRO. That his subject Leonard Bernstein had begun his career in this very place, conducting the Philharmonic at age 25, gave the evening extra resonance. Fervidly researching, Cooper was said to have attended many a performance in the past five years, seated in the conductor’s box hanging dangerously over the rail, in rapt attention to the feverish body movements needed for conducting. His devotion extended to every aspect of the film, and it shows. Now after MAESTRO’s many awards and nominations, the night’s focus turned to the Philharmonic’s star conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin, the ample stage packed with musicians, the soloists, and the 50-member chorus. Now a hero to classical musicians everywhere, Bradley Cooper put them in the spotlight. And shine they did.

In Cooper’s hands, glimpses of Bernstein’s musical genius pervade the film. Key scenes were projected over the live performances. The Requiem in St. John the Divine is the longest musical interlude, showing Cooper completely following in Bernstein’s conductor chops. As noted later in the Q&A, performers who had worked with Bernstein actually imagined him back in action. That’s how authentic Bradley Cooper seemed to them.

Cooper’s insistence upon authenticity was lauded over and over. Bernstein’s daughter Jamie Bernstein, who had written a memoir, Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein, and her siblings Alex and Nina were introduced. Josh Singer, co-writer with Cooper, was not present, but he has said that not a word from his original script for this 15-year project remained. Cooper chose to focus on the love affair, his marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre, giving Carey Mulligan in this Oscar-nominated role top billing. Truly divine, devoted to her husband, Felicia was devastated by Bernstein’s dalliances with other men, even though, as she says repeatedly, she knew what she was getting into.

Unlike Felicia, Carey Mulligan did not, but, having met Cooper at Lincoln Center some years before, she was persuaded to take the deep dive