Leonard Bernstein today is at the peak of his career. He is the idol of millions, a friend of world leaders, a giant of the worlds of television, theater, and music. He has dazzled with his talent, and made headlines with his outspoken views and exuberant life-style.
Joan Peyser traces Bernstein's life from his Boston childhood through his Tin Pan Alley apprenticeship, his Broadway successes, his struggle for a foothold in the tight society of serious music even after his overnight stardom with the New York Philharmonic, his remarkable career as conductor, composer, and thinking man's celebrity, and his emergence as America's most admired cultural ambassador.
Peyser also considers candidly, as no one has before, the more controversial side of Bernstein the man. She probes his troubled marriage, his affairs, his bacchanalian tastes, and traces a lifetime of striking contradictions as Bernstein imbibes adoration, honors, and princely fees, yet remains alone, deeply depressed, and unable to sleep.
Bernstein is the first book that deals with the homosexuality that is so much a part of the world of music. Dimitri Mitropoulos, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Benjamin Britten, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, David Diamond, and Ned Rorem are among those who weave through this rich narrative. Peyser reveals what it was like for a homosexual to pursue a career — that of conductor of a symphony orchestra-that demanded a heterosexual facade, and how the choices Bernstein made affected his life and art.
Peyser's Bernstein is Bernstein through a looking glass: on one side a vastly talented man of good humor, sentimentality, compassion, and generosity; on the other, an ambitious, calculating, destructive seeker of power with insatiable hungers both public and private.