Maestro Trivia | 60 facts about the film

“Maestro” is biographical drama film that centers on the life of composer Leonard Bernstein and his relationship with his wife.

Let’s find out some trivia and facts about the film.

1. Maestro is a 2023 American biographical drama film
2. The film centers on the relationship between American composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre
3. It was directed by Bradley Cooper
4. From a screenplay he wrote with Josh Singer
5. It was produced by Cooper, Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Fred Berner and Amy Durning
6. The film stars Carey Mulligan as Montealegre alongside Cooper as Bernstein
7. Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, and Sarah Silverman appear in supporting roles
8. Maestro premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2023
9. There it was nominated for the Golden Lion
10. The film received a limited theatrical release on November 22, 2023
11. Before being released on Netflix on December 20
12. It received positive reviews from critics
13. It was named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute
14. It has also been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards
15. The project had been in development at Paramount Pictures
16. With Martin Scorsese initially planning to direct the film
17. He stepped down as director to work on The Irishman
18. Allowing Bradley Cooper to join the film in May 2018 as director and to star as Bernstein
19. Scorsese continued as producer alongside Steven Spielberg
20. Spielberg was also initially considering directing the film and had approached Cooper to star
21. But offered the director position to Cooper after a screening of A Star Is Born
22. In January 2020, the project was moved to Netflix, with filming expected to begin in 2021
23. In September 2020, the project was given the title Maestro with Carey Mulligan joining the cast
24. It was also announced that filming would begin in the spring of 2021
25. In October, Jeremy Strong joined the cast as John Gruen, but later dropped out due to scheduling conflicts
26. In March 2022, Matt Bomer joined the cast
27. Bomer would be confirmed in April, with Maya Hawke also announced as being cast
28. In June, Sarah Silverman was announced as playing Bernstein’s sister Shirley
29. In February 2023, Michael Urie was announced to be appearing in the film as Jerome Robbins
30. In April 2023, it was reported that Miriam Shor was a part of the cast
31. Filming was expected to begin on April 5, 2021 in Los Angeles
32. However, it instead began in May 2022
33. Production occurred at Tanglewood between May 21 and 26, and in New York City
34. Filming also took place at Ely Cathedral in England between October 20 and 22
35. Although Netflix does not publicly report box office grosses, IndieWire estimated the film made about $200,000 from eight theaters in its opening weekend
36. And a total of $300,000 over the five-day Thanksgiving frame
37. This would make it the most successful debut for the company since at least 2019
38. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 81% rating
39. Based on 227 critics’ reviews
40. With an average rating of 7.5/10
41. The website’s consensus reads: “Led by a pair of powerful performances, Maestro serves as a stirring overview of a tremendous talent’s life and legacy”
42. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100
43. Based on 58 critics
44. Indicating “generally favorable” reviews
45. Cooper’s use of a large prosthetic nose to portray Bernstein, who was Jewish, was criticized by some as an example of “Jewface”, following the release of photographs from the set of the film in May 2023 and the subsequent release of the trailer in August
46. The chief television critic of The Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Fienberg, criticized in a Twitter post the casting of Cooper
47. Along with the British gentile Mulligan as a Costa Rican-Chilean converted Jew, as “a LOT of ethnic cosplay for one movie”
48. English Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman wrote that if Cooper “can’t [play the role] through the power of acting alone then don’t cast him – get a Jewish actor”
49. She felt that as Cooper had portrayed Joseph Merrick, a 19th-century British man who had severe facial deformities, without prosthetics, “then he should be able to manage to play a Jewish man without one”
50. Bernstein’s children defended Cooper’s use of prosthetic makeup to portray him
51. Stating that they worked with Cooper throughout the filmmaking process and that their “dad would have been fine with it”
52. The Anti-Defamation League noted historical media portrayal of Jews as “evil caricatures with large, hooked noses” but said that “this film, which is a biopic, … is not that”
53. In September 2023, Kazu Hiro, who created the prosthetic, said that he was surprised by the criticism but was “sorry if [he] hurt some people’s feelings”
54. He added that “our only intention” was to portray Bernstein “as authentically as possible”
55. The New Yorker published an essay defending the special effects make-up used by Hiro in the film and numbered him as among the top three or four special effects make-up artists of the past fifty years
56. Maestro features Bernstein compositions that were handpicked by Cooper
57. Those pieces were performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with a few choral performances by the London Symphony Chorus, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin who also served as Cooper’s conducting coach
58. The soundtrack was preceded with an excerpt from the finale of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection” as a single on October 20
59. The full soundtrack was released by Deutsche Grammophon digitally on November 10 and was released physically on December 1
60. The music played by Bernstein at the piano during the prologue comes from his 1983 opera A Quiet Place which depicts a dysfunctional family, including an estranged gay son whose mother has just died