How Bradley Cooper Nailed His Six-Minute ‘Maestro’ Conducting Scene in One Take: ‘Singing at the Oscars’ Doesn’t Even Compare
variety.comAdam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer In “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper disappears into the role of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, one of the most consequential American figures in classical music.
Like his 2018 directorial debut, “A Star Is Born,” Cooper also co-wrote, produced and directed the film. In his conversation with Emma Stone for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, he spoke at length about the six years he spent devoting himself to bringing Bernstein’s singular life to the screen.
At one point Stone (there to discuss her own performance in “Poor Things”) talked about going to Cooper’s house with her mother to watch a cut of “Maestro,” which reduced them both to tears.
Stone was especially stunned by a scene, roughly two thirds into the film, in which Cooper as Bernstein conducts Gustav Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral in England in 1973. “Full body chills,” Stone said. “It felt like I was watching a true conductor, a master at work.” Unfolding largely in a single, six-minute take — and shot in the actual cathedral, with a live orchestra and choir, and an audience of extras — the scene serves as a critical turning point in Bernstein’s relationship with his wife, Felicia (Carey Mulligan), as well as the emotional climax of the movie.
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