Co u rte sy o f o f Th e Leo nar d B er ns tei n Offi ce
{ program notes
Leonard Bernstein
project as a vehicle for protesting the
infamous activities of Senator Joseph
McCarthy and his House Committee on Un-American Activities and the
blacklisting of prominent American
intellectuals and artists as suspected
Communists; summoned before HUAC,
she had refused to incriminate her colleagues with the proud words, “I cannot
and will not cut my conscience to fit this
year’s fashions.” However, Bernstein saw
a much broader relevance in the story:
“Puritanical snobbery, phony moralism,
inquisitorial attacks on the individual,
brave-new-world optimism, essential
superiority — aren’t these all charges leveled against American society by our best
thinkers? And they are also charges made
by Voltaire against his own society.”
A Troubled Gestation
The creation of Candide took more
than two years, from 1954 to 1956, and
encountered many roadblocks along the
way. A writer of serious dramas with no
experience in musical comedy, Hellman
struggled with the operetta’s book. For
his part, Bernstein kept wandering off to
other creative projects or the demands of
his burgeoning conducting career. The
initial lyricist, John LaTouche, was let go,
and Bernstein decided he and Hellman
36 O v ertur e |
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Over the next three decades,
various revivals were
mounted, and each time,
both book and music were
significantly altered.
would write the lyrics. When that proved
an impracticable burden on top of
composing the music, the gifted young
poet Richard Wilbur was hired in
1956; though he, too, had no musical
comedy experience, he proved to be an
inspired choice.
Opening at Broadway’s Martin Beck
Theater on December 1, 1956, Candide was perhaps a bit too intellectually
weighty to appeal to a broad audience
and closed after just 73 performances.
It also suffered from a stylistic problem:
its music was generally too sophisticated
and too operatic for audiences used to
Rodgers and Hammerstein. Its cast was
devoid of stars, although its first Cunégonde, Barbara Cook, soon became one.
Though its critical reviews were mixed,
it was well liked by The New York Times,
and John Chapman of the New York
Daily News called it “a work of genius.”
Bernstein was less concerned over the
money lost than the failure of a work he
cared about deeply. The huge success of
West Side Story only a few months later
was only partial solace.
But this was far from the end of Candide’s story. Over the next three decades,
various revivals were mounted, and each
time, both book and music were significantly altered. Bernstein and Hellman
had nothing to do with the first genuinely successful revival in 1973, when the
director Hal Prince commissioned Hugh
Wheeler to rewrite the book (Hellman
had stipulated that none of her original
dialogue be used) for a stripped-down
version with a drastically reduced orchestra for Brooklyn’s Chelsea Theater; it was
such a hit it was transferred to Broadway
and ran for more than 700 performances.
Bernstein was, however, very actively
involved with Candide’s 1982 and 1988
productions at the New York City Opera
and the Scottish Opera respectively, which
restored the work to the operatic dimensions he’d originally envisioned. With his
cooperation, the conductor John Mauceri
included music left out of the earlier productions, such as the recurring Westphalia
Chorale (“Universal Good”) and Candide’s moving final aria, with words by
Bernstein, “Nothing More Than This.”
Both productions were warmly embraced