Felicia Montealegre

Felicia Cohn Montealegre (3 March 1922 – 16 June 1978) was an American stage and television actress born in Chile.From 1951 until her death, she was the wife of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.

Life and career

Cohn Montealegre was born on March 3, 1922 in Barrio Amón, San José, Costa Rica. She was raised Catholic, and later converted to Judaism, when marrying Leonard Bernstein (her own paternal grandfather had been Jewish). She established herself in New York. She studied piano with Claudio Arrau and met composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein at a party Arrau gave in 1946. She and Bernstein were engaged to be married but this was broken off. Subsequently she had an affair lasting for several years with Broadway and Hollywood actor Richard Hart. After Hart's death, she married Bernstein in 1951. They had three children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina.

Montealegre's voice can be heard on two works conducted by Bernstein: his own Kaddish Symphony as well as a version of Debussy's Le martyre de Saint Sébastien, partially performed in English.