Leonard Bernstein Awkwardly Turns the Screws on Tenor Jose Carreras While Recording West Side Story (1984)

What have we here?

Evi­dence that the Mae­stro is a mon­ster?

Or a behind the scenes reminder that Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment’s wannabe actor Tobias Fünke is not too far off base when he says that to make it in “this busi­ness of show, you have to have the heart of an angel and the hide… of an ele­phant.”

Both? Nei­ther? Any way you slice it, the record­ing ses­sion above is not for your typ­i­cal cast album.

West Side Sto­ry, with a book by Arthur Lau­rents, music by Leonard Bern­stein, and lyrics by Stephen Sond­heim, opened on Broad­way in 1957.

The film, star­ring Natal­ie Wood and Richard Beymer as star-crossed lovers Maria and Tony, came along four years lat­er.

After which it’s been an end­less round of com­mu­ni­ty, col­lege, and high school pro­duc­tions.

Are you a Jet or a Shark?

The cel­e­brat­ed tenor José Car­reras does not make a par­tic­u­lar­ly believ­able Jet.

While untold num­bers of white kids have attempt­ed Puer­to Rican accents to play Maria, Bernar­do, Ani­ta, and Chi­no, that knife has sel­dom cut the oth­er way.

Per­haps a dialect coach could have trans­formed Car­reras’ thick Span­ish accent into Tony’s New York street punk ver­nac­u­lar, but the prep time for these Sep­tem­ber 1984 record­ing ses­sions was min­i­mal, and not tied to any actu­al pro­duc­tion.

Car­reras was also, at 38, a bit long in the tooth to be tack­ling the part.

But what might have been deal break­ers for a Broad­way revival were per­mis­si­ble for this week­long spe­cial event in which world-cal­iber artists, “whose main rea­son for exist­ing,” accord­ing to Bern­stein, was their singing, would be lay­ing down the score in the stu­dio, backed by a full orches­tra.

As he told his asso­ciate and even­tu­al biog­ra­ph­er, clas­si­cal music tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter Humphrey Bur­ton:

l’d always thought of West Side Sto­ry in terms of teenagers and there are no teenage opera singers, it’s just a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. But this is a record­ing and peo­ple don’t have to look 16, they don’t have to be able to dance or act a rather dif­fi­cult play eight times a week. And there­fore we took this rather unortho­dox step of cast­ing num­ber-one world-class opera singers. I sup­pose the only fore­see­able prob­lem was that they might sound too old—but they don’t, they just sound mar­velous!

Bernstein’s approv­ing mood is nowhere in evi­dence in the above clip, in which he hec­tors Car­reras for screw­ing up the tem­po, as the instru­men­tal­ists and sound engi­neers squirm.

Car­reras’ dis­com­fort and cha­grin is so pal­pa­ble that you can find the sequence on YouTube under the title “Tenor Keeps Screw­ing Up while Bern­stein Con­ducts—Awk­ward Sequence,” as if he were some weedy upstart, still wet behind the ears, when in fact, he had just flown in from Verona, where he’d been appear­ing as Don José in Car­men.

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Car­reras’ Maria, sup­plied a taste of what it was like to sing for the com­pos­er:

He’s a man of many emo­tions. You can see his moods, his frus­tra­tions, his hap­pi­ness, his want­i­ng to per­form to peo­ple. That’s the thing that makes the man inter­est­ing. One is con­stant­ly try­ing to read him, but he’s on anoth­er plan­et!

In the end, Bern­stein declared him­self pleased with what had been accom­plished, or at least with the endur­ing pow­er of the mate­r­i­al.

But read­ers with an anti-author­i­tar­i­an streak may not feel sat­is­fied until they’ve seen the clip below, in which a rogue BBC Orches­tra trum­pet isn’t quite so def­er­en­tial in the face of the Maestro’s crit­i­cism.

Lis­ten to the 1984 record­ing of West Side Sto­ry for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces the Moog Syn­the­siz­er to the World in 1969, Play­ing an Elec­tri­fied Ver­sion of Bach’s “Lit­tle Fugue in G”

Watch Leonard Bern­stein Con­duct the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic Using Only His Eye­brows

Leonard Bern­stein Presents “The Great­est 5 Min­utes in Music Edu­ca­tion”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain in New York City this April. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.