the best of all possible candides—to date
by Douglas Messerli
Hugh Wheeler (book,
adapted from Voltaire), in a new version by John Caird, Richard Wilbur, Stephen
Sondheim, John Latouche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Leonard Bernstein
(lyrics), Leonard Bernstein (music) Candide
/ LAOpera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion / Howard Fox and I attended the
work on Sunday, February 11, 2018
It is something short
of a miracle that Leonard Bernstein’s Candide
ever came to be produced. Spearheaded, in part, by Lillian Hellman’s desire to
work with Bernstein; after having a touch of
She (and Bernstein) and other of their
friends, including Bernstein’s mentor Aaron Copland, had recently been targets
of U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, and
had all accumulated rather thick files in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI investigations.
Just a few years previous, Arthur Miller, also attacked by McCarthy and Hoover,
had written The Crucible, using the
Salem witch trials as a metaphor about McCarthy and his committee’s activities.
And Hellman, even more a polemicist than Voltaire, but without his light
satiric abilities, thought the material perfect for the time. I’m sure
Bernstein felt that he couldn’t resist it.
Hellman, who despite her liberal pose in
society and her supposed advocation of lesbianism in her early play The Children’s Hour, immediately took a
dislike to Latouche, in part because he was “queer.”
But very soon, everybody, except
evidently Bernstein, became intimidated by her imperial hand, and the music
ground down to a halt, due also to Latouche’s weekly disappearances and his
other commitments—a situation in which he continually found himself throughout
his short life—including the libretto for Douglas Moore’s highly successful
opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe. Even
Bernstein, working at the same time on his musical West Side Story decided to take a break from the difficult musical.
Bernstein, finally frustrated with
Latouche’s lack of attention to his project, replaced him with
The witty Dorothy Parker was also brought
aboard to write, but soon left, leaving only one piece behind “The Marquise’s
Gavotte,” which has now completely disappeared in the newest incarnation which
I saw at the LA Opera production. Parker soon fled the scene as well, declaring
that it had “too many geniuses.”
Poet, novelist, and critic James Agee
also was briefly asked to contribute lyrics, but his death in May 1955, when
the production was finally beginning to gel, obviously precluded his
involvement.
Latouche continued with the project,
retreating to his Calais, Vermont retreat—presumably not yet hearing that he
had been replaced by Wilbur—to further work on the lyrics, he also dying of a
“coronary occlusion” in August 1956, before the work’s premiere.
In the months before the Broadway
production, most of Latouche’s lyrics were revised by Wilbur, many of them of
them not so felicitously. Howard Pollack, in his recent biography of Latouche
recounts at least one such revision, which is retained in the LA Opera version.
latuoche’s
version:
Dearest lady, pray explain,
I had thought you slain;
Thought you rudely violated too.
wilbur’s
version:
Dearest, how can this be so?
You were dead, you know.
You were shot and bayoneted, too.
The later clearly
moves away from Voltaire, completely ignoring his illusion to her rape.
In another last moment change, Latouche’s
clever “This is a perfect day for an auto-de-fé” was expunged because it was
presumed no one might know what auto-de-fé (“act of faith”) meant. Characters
were deleted, songs dropped, others replacing them. By the time Candide, after a tryout in Boston,
reached New York, it was, as critic Walter Kerr declared—despite its marvelous
music, incredible costumes and sets, and an incomparable cast of Barbara Cook,
Robert Rounseville, Max Adrian, and Irra Petina—“a really spectacular
disaster.” Candide was a musical
flop, lasting only 73 performances, despite several other very positive
reviews.
Over the years, Bernstein constantly
revised it, throwing out songs and adding new ones, and others continued to
rewrite it along with him. I saw a failed production of the musical at the
Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center in the 1970s. Even given my desire for the
success of the production, I remember it as a failure.
The new LAOpera production, which I saw
the other evening has completely expunged Lillian Hellman (good riddance) for a
new adaptation by Hugh Wheeler, in yet a newer version by British John Caird,
who rewrote it for the Royal National Theatre. Our program lists further lyrics
by Stephen Sondheim. Now it is extraordinarily difficult to know who has
written what, although it seems that Latouche’s “Auto-de-fé” lyrics have been
returned, and his early versions of “The Best of All Possible Worlds” and other
songs have been retained.
The cast, with Kelsey Grammer playing both Voltaire, now a link connecting the various aspects of an extraordinarily episodic plot, and Pangloss; the wonderful Broadway singer Christine Ebersole playing the Old Lady; and two gloriously new singers, who I am sure we will be hearing more of soon, Jack Swanson as Candide and Erin Morley as Cunegonde.
Morley has already begun an illustrious career as an opera singer, and I’m sure she will go further quickly. Swanson, a relative neophyte, was the real surprise of the night. A wonderful singer, a handsome and appealing actor, I can only hope he makes a career as a delightful operatic presence; he was certainly appealing in this role.
Christine Ebersole, who I also saw in Grey Gardens, was simply marvelous as
The Old Lady, but I wanted more! And the role simply didn’t provide it. Just
another song would have been perfect.
Grammar, a good actor and a passable
singer, simply didn’t have the acoustical lungs to lift his words up to the
balcony. I may be gradually losing my hearing, but most of us agreed he simply
couldn’t be heard when he spoke. Ebersole came through nicely, and all the
music came across quite accessibly, but Grammar’s voice just didn’t have the
lung power to reach the entire audience, alas.
Yet, overall, despite the problems of the
second act’s episodic adventures, a pattern already laid out in the first
act—which I would argue is the real problem with this Bernstein work (too bad
Latouche was not retained to create a cleverer body of poetry for the second
act)—the theater piece which even Bernstein could never quite define, and is,
after all, even after its hundreds of revisions, a truly “holy mess,” worked
beautifully, stirring up the entire audience to rounds of applause.
And why complain? As James Conlon has
described it in his brief introduction:
“Bernstein’s Candide wanders the musical world in a
kaleidoscopic succession of styles and acquisitions: jazz, Broadway,
Stravinsky, neo-Baroque, operetta, tango, the world of his American
contemporaries and even, in some versions, a Schoenbergian 12-tone row. And, of
course, there is Mahler, a composer with whom Bernstein identified deeply.”
Then there is Kurt Weill, the great
German composer of so many of Brecht’s most serious dramas. Even Lotte Lenya,
Weill’s wife, recognized Bernstein’s understanding of that composer’s work. In
Weill’s wild assimilation of popular and classical musical tropes, he tried to
bring the masses into a far more serious operatic tradition than they might
have imagined they were experiencing. Bernstein wanted the same thing.
And I think, in the performance I saw the
other night, Bernstein achieved that. I was amazed how the audience, a wide
range of individuals, did not suddenly stand in immediate obeisance of what
they had just experienced—a standard procedure of LAOpera audiences—but sat in
their seats applauding again and again and again in delight for the
performances. I think we, after the last Mahleresque ballad, which is the true
heart of so many Bernstein works, “Make Our Garden Grow,” were all in tears:
And let us try before we die
to make some sense of life.
We’re neither pure nor wise, nor
good:
we’ll do the best we know.
I knew, as I think the audience also did,
that I had just seen the best version of this terribly flawed musical
extravaganza that might be possible. And, yes, it is the best of all possible
productions. As Pangloss asks: “Any questions?”
Los Angeles, February 13, 2018
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (February
2018).
Hellman, who despite her liberal pose in
society and her supposed advocation of lesbianism in her early play The Children’s Hour, immediately took a
dislike to Latouche, in part because he was “queer.”
But very soon, everybody, except
evidently Bernstein, became intimidated by her imperial hand, and the music
ground down to a halt, due also to Latouche’s weekly disappearances and his
other commitments—a situation in which he continually found himself throughout
his short life—including the libretto for Douglas Moore’s highly successful
opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe. Even
Bernstein, working at the same time on his musical West Side Story decided to take a break from the difficult musical.
Bernstein, finally frustrated with
Latouche’s lack of attention to his project, replaced him with
The witty Dorothy Parker was also brought
aboard to write, but soon left, leaving only one piece behind “The Marquise’s
Gavotte,” which has now completely disappeared in the newest incarnation which
I saw at the LA Opera production. Parker soon fled the scene as well, declaring
that it had “too many geniuses.”
Poet, novelist, and critic James Agee
also was briefly asked to contribute lyrics, but his death in May 1955, when
the production was finally beginning to gel, obviously precluded his
involvement.
Latouche continued with the project,
retreating to his Calais, Vermont retreat—presumably not yet hearing that he
had been replaced by Wilbur—to further work on the lyrics, he also dying of a
“coronary occlusion” in August 1956, before the work’s premiere.
In the months before the Broadway
production, most of Latouche’s lyrics were revised by Wilbur, many of them of
them not so felicitously. Howard Pollack, in his recent biography of Latouche
recounts at least one such revision, which is retained in the LA Opera version.
latuoche’s
version:
Dearest lady, pray explain,
I had thought you slain;
Thought you rudely violated too.
wilbur’s
version:
Dearest, how can this be so?
You were dead, you know.
You were shot and bayoneted, too.
The later clearly
moves away from Voltaire, completely ignoring his illusion to her rape.
In another last moment change, Latouche’s
clever “This is a perfect day for an auto-de-fé” was expunged because it was
presumed no one might know what auto-de-fé (“act of faith”) meant. Characters
were deleted, songs dropped, others replacing them. By the time Candide, after a tryout in Boston,
reached New York, it was, as critic Walter Kerr declared—despite its marvelous
music, incredible costumes and sets, and an incomparable cast of Barbara Cook,
Robert Rounseville, Max Adrian, and Irra Petina—“a really spectacular
disaster.” Candide was a musical
flop, lasting only 73 performances, despite several other very positive
reviews.
Over the years, Bernstein constantly
revised it, throwing out songs and adding new ones, and others continued to
rewrite it along with him. I saw a failed production of the musical at the
Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center in the 1970s. Even given my desire for the
success of the production, I remember it as a failure.
The new LAOpera production, which I saw
the other evening has completely expunged Lillian Hellman (good riddance) for a
new adaptation by Hugh Wheeler, in yet a newer version by British John Caird,
who rewrote it for the Royal National Theatre. Our program lists further lyrics
by Stephen Sondheim. Now it is extraordinarily difficult to know who has
written what, although it seems that Latouche’s “Auto-de-fé” lyrics have been
returned, and his early versions of “The Best of All Possible Worlds” and other
songs have been retained.
The cast, with Kelsey Grammer playing
both Voltaire, now a link connecting the various aspects of an extraordinarily
episodic plot, and Pangloss; the wonderful Broadway singer Christine Ebersole
playing the Old Lady; and two gloriously new singers, who I am sure we will be
hearing more of soon, Jack Swanson as Candide and Erin Morley as Cunegonde.
Morley has already begun an illustrious
career as an opera singer, and I’m sure she will go further quickly. Swanson, a
relative neophyte, was the real surprise of the night. A wonderful singer, a
handsome and appealing actor, I can only hope he makes a career as a delightful
operatic presence; he was certainly appealing in this role.
Christine Ebersole, who I also saw in Grey Gardens, was simply marvelous as
The Old Lady, but I wanted more! And the role simply didn’t provide it. Just
another song would have been perfect.
Grammar, a good actor and a passable
singer, simply didn’t have the acoustical lungs to lift his words up to the
balcony. I may be gradually losing my hearing, but most of us agreed he simply
couldn’t be heard when he spoke. Ebersole came through nicely, and all the
music came across quite accessibly, but Grammar’s voice just didn’t have the
lung power to reach the entire audience, alas.
Yet, overall, despite the problems of the
second act’s episodic adventures, a pattern already laid out in the first
act—which I would argue is the real problem with this Bernstein work (too bad
Latouche was not retained to create a cleverer body of poetry for the second
act)—the theater piece which even Bernstein could never quite define, and is,
after all, even after its hundreds of revisions, a truly “holy mess,” worked
beautifully, stirring up the entire audience to rounds of applause.
And why complain? As James Conlon has
described it in his brief introduction:
“Bernstein’s Candide wanders the musical world in a
kaleidoscopic succession of styles and acquisitions: jazz, Broadway,
Stravinsky, neo-Baroque, operetta, tango, the world of his American
contemporaries and even, in some versions, a Schoenbergian 12-tone row. And, of
course, there is Mahler, a composer with whom Bernstein identified deeply.”
Then there is Kurt Weill, the great
German composer of so many of Brecht’s most serious dramas. Even Lotte Lenya,
Weill’s wife, recognized Bernstein’s understanding of that composer’s work. In
Weill’s wild assimilation of popular and classical musical tropes, he tried to
bring the masses into a far more serious operatic tradition than they might
have imagined they were experiencing. Bernstein wanted the same thing.
And I think, in the performance I saw the
other night, Bernstein achieved that. I was amazed how the audience, a wide
range of individuals, did not suddenly stand in immediate obeisance of what
they had just experienced—a standard procedure of LAOpera audiences—but sat in
their seats applauding again and again and again in delight for the
performances. I think we, after the last Mahleresque ballad, which is the true
heart of so many Bernstein works, “Make Our Garden Grow,” were all in tears:
And let us try before we die
to make some sense of life.
We’re neither pure nor wise, nor
good:
we’ll do the best we know.
I knew, as I think the audience also did,
that I had just seen the best version of this terribly flawed musical
extravaganza that might be possible. And, yes, it is the best of all possible
productions. As Pangloss asks: “Any questions?”
Los Angeles, February 13, 2018
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (February
2018).
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