Tea at Trianon: Bernstein’s Real Home

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, December 29, 2023

Bernstein’s Real Home

I saw the film Maestro. I wish there had been more about Bernstein's work and less about his private proclivities. It was a brilliant film and it showed how his wife and his family were the source of his energy and creativity. From Architectural Digest:
It’s no small thing to open your doors to a film crew, never mind for a movie that intimately depicts your parents. But that’s exactly what conductor Leonard Bernstein and actor Felicia Montealegre Bernstein’s children did during the production of Bradley Cooper’s movie Maestro. Cooper shot at the family’s Fairfield, Connecticut, home which the couple bought in 1962 and Leonard left to his children, Jamie, Nina, and Alexander Bernstein, when he died in 1990.

“When a movie is shot in your house, it’s a tremendous disruption,” Jamie says, explaining that she’d gone through the process on a previous film that was shot in her New York apartment. But she and her siblings didn’t let that knowledge stop them from allowing Cooper and his crew to film in Fairfield. “An element of trust ran through the entire project, so it’s not surprising that that trust extended to letting our house be part of the film. Everything Bradley did created this environment where everybody felt this bond and warmth and sense of trust and safety.”

Though Jamie and her siblings were never on set during production, friends who help take care of the property witnessed the prep and described it as if the filmmakers had “picked the house up and taken it upside down and shaken it.” But by the end of filming, everything was returned back to its rightful place.

Production designer Kevin Thompson was a part of that careful upturning, as he sought the best way of representing the central characters’ tastes as they manifest in their living space. Research is a part of any production designer’s process and the opportunity to be in the home, never mind shoot there, was an unparalleled route to understanding the film’s two subjects. “The home had not changed much in terms of architecture or wall coverings and things like that, so we were able to actually see the layers of things that Felicia had done to the house,” Thompson explains. “We were also able to get into the intimate aspect of family photos, Felicia’s paintings on the walls, the subjects that she painted, the things in the junk drawer, and there were still traces of them almost everywhere.”

[...]

Felicia was the prime decorator for the Bernstein family, and though she worked with an interior decorator on their New York homes, she decorated the Fairfield home herself. “When Bradley and I went to the house the first time we walked around and we just got such an overwhelming emotional sense of what their country life was,” Thompson says. “It was very unpretentious. It was very comfortable. It was filled with little touches that Felicia had done because she was more the decorator, the flea market goer, the person that put the homes together.” On top of acting, Felicia was also a painter, particularly during time spent in Fairfield, and her artworks made their way into the film too. (Read more.)