Leonard Bernsteins *Complicated* Love Life, Explained

There’s no doubt the chemistry between Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan, playing über-composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre in Netflix’s new biopic Maestro, is hot and heavy. It’s impossible not to feel at least a few heart tugs (or something more) as the Oscar-nominated actors depict the couple’s blissful highs and excruciating lows.

But in real life, the relationship between Leonard and Felicia—while built on a foundation of genuine love and admiration—could get bitter, even savage. The source of much of their internal strife: Leonard was regularly unfaithful to his wife. And he happened to enjoy the company of younger men.

While Maestro gives us a glimpse into Leonard's secret gay dalliances (which the musical celebrity was not good at hiding), including a small but moving performance by Matt Bomer as one of his lovers, there is much more to unpack about this man’s romantic upheavals. Leonard may have been a creative genius, but his personal affairs could be downright messy. Or as Carey Mulligan’s Felicia icily puts it at one point in the movie, witnessing his indiscretion: “You’re getting sloppy!”

Here we break down everything you need to know about Leonard's active and seriously *complicated* love life, either before or after you watch Bradley Cooper’s latest film (now bingeable on Netflix), including what didn’t make it into the final cut.

And if you’re wondering how the hell we can know all these private details, don’t worry: While some mystery necessarily remains, the West Side Story composer and onetime New York Philharmonic musical director’s marital and sexual history is a topic of ~ academic ~ interest. It’s been documented by not just tabloids but also Smithsonian and, yes, even Yale University. (Lest you think PhDs don’t care what famous people do under the sheets.)

When did Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre get married?

Let’s back up: Felicia Montealegre was born to a Costa Rican mother and American father in Costa Rica in 1922, though the family moved to Chile when she was a year old, Biography reports. There, the pianist Claudio Arrau nurtured her musical talent, training her on the instrument.

By 1944, she had moved to New York, where she would cross paths with the American-born Leonard Bernstein (also, it should be said, a Jewish icon). In fact, before they met, Felicia watched him conduct at the New York City Center and declared right then and there that she was going to marry this handsome dude with a baton, according to the book Leonard Bernstein by Humphrey Burton. They finally did meet face-to-face at a party hosted by her mentor, Claudio, who had earlier played the Brahms D minor concerto with Leonard at a concert.

The electricity between the two was instant, and they were engaged just a few months later. But they called it off within the year, feeling they were too young to make it work. She took on a new paramour in the actor Richard Hart (who literally starred in a movie called Desire Me!), and when he sadly died of a heart attack at 35, she gravitated back toward Leonard. Their second engagement happened in 1951, and they were married less than a month later.

Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre in 1959.

“Over the next few months, she would learn the hard way, through his absence, about his peripatetic lifestyle,” Humphrey Burton wrote in his biography, “with its pattern of incessant travel and hotel meals, new orchestras to conquer, and other relationships to pursue.”

Leonard and Felicia would go on to have three kids: Jamie, Alexander, and Nina. They put on a good front as a loving pair, while he soaked up public adoration and acclaim. But privately, the struggle of being together and his rampant cheating—not to mention the denial of his identity—took enormous tolls.

Did she… know he was sexually attracted to men?

Yes. She was fully aware of his sexual inclination toward men even before they wed.

"She knew exactly what the deal was," their eldest child, Jamie Bernstein, said in a CBS interview of her dad’s closeted bisexuality.

"They obviously loved each other to death," their son Alexander Bernstein added to CBS. "They never fought in front of us. We never saw any darkness. We felt a lot.”

Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre with Jamie and Alexander in 1957.

“You are a homosexual and may never change,” Felicia wrote to Leonard in a letter their children found after her death, according to the New York Post. “You do not admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do?” Yet despite his sexuality and wandering eye, she also noted, “I am willing to accept you as you are.”

Still, the toll on her spirit was massive as the years went on and he continued his flings across the world. "I feel like it cost her everything to stick with it," Jamie added in the CBS interview. "It was really tough for her.” In fact, it may have had grave effects on her health, per the people who knew her best (more on that below).

Interestingly, while Felicia pointed out Leonard's dishonesty in real life, in Maestro, a quietly shattering scene has her insisting that their shared secrecy remain intact. “Don’t you dare tell her the truth,” Carey Mulligan tells her husband when Jamie (Maya Hawke) comes home asking about the gossip surrounding her father.

Okay, but I need to know, who were these other people he was sleeping with?

Oh, the receipts are endless. It seems that despite wanting a traditional life that would be accepted by the world of conductors and beyond, Leonard didn’t work terribly hard to shield his sexual escapades or conflicted identity. In fact, he opened up about both in letters, including to his various (mostly male) flames, as a Yale University Press article notes.

In Maestro, a steamy (duh) but also heartfelt Matt Bomer plays one such gay lover and letter receiver: David Oppenheim, a clarinetist who carried on an intimate but tortured relationship with the conductor friend in the ‘40s. (Leonard did not subscribe to the idea that work and erotic pleasure should be separate.) David was also reportedly closeted and went on to have marriages with three different women. (He also looked a whole lot like Leonard in real life!)

Leonard's most lasting affair, however, was with Kunihiko Hashimoto, a Japanese fan working at a Tokyo insurance company whom the conductor met on tour. Letters (again!) reveal that a passionate, 10-year relationship blossomed between the sexagenarian and 26-year-old Kunihiko in the last decade of Leonard's life.

“I noticed that he was gazing upon me,” an older Kunihiko Hashimoto told the Guardian in 2019. "It is hard to explain about his eyes. It was not to try to talk to me nor seduce me, just he was looking at me. It was irresistible.”

How did things between Leonard and Felicia end?

In a word, tragically: Felicia, a chain smoker like her husband, died from lung cancer in 1978 at the age of 56. While she and Leonard had never officially divorced, he broke things off in 1976 to be with a male radio station manager. Yet the very next year, after she was diagnosed with cancer, he returned to be by her side and care for her as her health declined.

Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre in 1955.

While Felicia's cancer devastated Leonard and brought the couple back together, their daughter Jamie has a not-so-rosy view of how her dad’s tumultuous infidelity affected her mother. “I think it contributed to her early death, in a way,” she told CBS.

After Felicia's passing, Leonard had numerous lovers, one of whom was Kunihiko. Kunihiko is not depicted in Maestro, but the movie’s bittersweet ending does show Leonard, at the end of his life, courting a much-younger conductor pupil. Partying sweatily next to the mentee in a closing scene, Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein has the glow of someone who can finally embrace his full desires, even if he can’t admit them to the world.

WATCH 'MAESTRO' ON NETFLIX HERE

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