Good morning, all! I have a very early date at Toyland because I forgot that at 10:15 I have an appointment to hear the results of my MRI. Then, back to Toyland, and home to clean off the fire escape, go to the corner for strong drugs, and a trip to the liquor store: I need all the help I can get during DR MBarnum's too-long stay.
DR edisaurus, you asked about CANDIDE and you're gonna get it. While I had a lot of fun seeing the 1973 revisical, I am a strong believer in both the score and the composer's intentions, which nearly every version since 1973 has subverted. The show began as a play with music suggestion from Lillian Hellman who wanted to show the connection between the HUAC McCarthy hearings and the auto-da-fe's after the Lisbon earthquake. Bernstein saw Voltaire's satire as a chance for him to write satirical music and the show ended up as a "comic operetta" requiring good singers, who couldn't act as well as Hellman wanted her scenes to be performed. To her credit, shw took a picaresque novel with a lot of stupid characters enduring endless rape, torture, death, venereal disease, fraud, etc. and gave the plot a development that Voltaire never even considered, and her last scene in the ruins of Westphalia, when everyone finally wises up, is really beautiful and moving.
Bernstein's score is a mini-history of Western Music from the Eighteenth Century to Alban Berg as a joke:
Westphalia
1. Overture: Sullivan's "The Yeoman of the Guard" meets Rossini
2. The Best of All Possible Worlds: Gilbert & Sullivan
3. Oh, Happy We - I can't pinpoint anything here
4. Chorale and Battle: Bach chorales and a bit of Stravinsky
5. It Must Be So: folksong
Lisbon
5. Auto-da-fe: probably a bit of Verdi's auto-da-fe in DON CARLO and a lot that sounds Russian and Spanish to me with Gregorian chant
Paris
6. Waltz: Ravel's LA VALSE
7. Glitter and Be Gay: Jewel Song from FAUST and every other 19th Century coloratura aria
8. You Were Dead, You Know: bel canto det a la TRAVIATA
9. Pilgrim's Procession: There's a bit of Respighi's THE BIRDS
Buenos Aires
10. My Love: a serenade, but I couldn't point out a model here
11. I Am Easily Assimilated: tango
The score was conceived regionally: French music in Paris, German chorale in Westphalia, Spanish in Buenos Aires, etc. Bernstein hated the 1973 revision because it destroyed his framework.
John Mauceri and Harold Prince in 1973 removed the operetta/opera parody and turned the show into a comic romp. The homosexuality of Maximilian, only briefly referred to by Voltaire and Hellman, became a big camp item, Hershy Kay's reorchestration lost all of its original sense of classical parody by being pared down. Bernstein wasn't happy with the 1973 or the 1980s City Opera Version which kept the 1973 frame and inserted more of the original score, stillout of order.
In the late 1980s, Mauceri and the Scottish Opera put together a new CANDIDE with all the music back in its proper placement, Bernstein sanctioned this, and later in London he recorded a complete concert version of this edition.
I still prefer the 1956 cast; the recording is well conducted and the cast, with the exception of a radiant Bartbara Cook, often sounds too mature but sings the score excellently.
