The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta

Berlioz had great difficulty in getting the opera performed, especially after rumours that it lasted eight hours, and the critics judged it severely, saying that such music could not and should not be allowed.

Nevertheless, people did enjoy Les Troyens and the composer himself recounted that, shortly after the first performance, he ‘was stopped in the street by strangers who wished to shake hands with me and thank me for having composed it. Was not that ample recompense for the sneers of my enemies?’

Berlioz identified the young sailor, Hylas, with his own son Louis, and certainly had Louis in mind as he wrote that famous song of homesickness.

Recommended Recording

Jon Vickers, Josephine Veasy, Royal Opera Covent Garden/Colin Davis. Philips 416 432-2. A classic recording conducted by the most authoritative (and loving) Berlioz champion of modern times.

Leonard Bernstein (#ulink_056ffdb3-c164-5f8f-bf17-29c3e0f33cec)

(1918–90)

Trouble in Tahiti (1952)

Candide (1956)

West Side Story (1957)

A Quiet Place (1983)

Bernstein was one of the great personalities and true bridge-builders of 20th-century music: a conducting, composing, all-round American icon whose work (usually in emotional overdrive) crossed the divide between high art and popular entertainment with a panache that only Gershwin managed before him. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants to the United States, he made headlines after his conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and went on to run the NYPO for twelve exuberant years, attracting special acclaim for his uniquely heart-on-sleeve performances of Mahler. His first mature stage works were ballets (Fancy Free, Facsimile) and musical comedy (On the Town) in the 1940s. The short, one-act Trouble in Tahiti came out of those worlds – half-opera, half-Broadway – as did Candide and West Side Story, which contain the same sort of hybrid ingredients but in different proportions, and the Mass of 1971 which is the most eclectically uncategorisable score of all, uncomfortably strung between theatre, liturgy and stale ’60s idealism. Jewish identity featured prominently in two of his three symphonies, and in the ballet Dybbuk.

Candide (#ulink_846c74c0-9970-5b58-9d1c-595d6dbec067)

FORM: Operetta in two acts; in English

COMPOSER: Leonard Bernstein (1918–90)

LIBRETTO: Lillian Heilman; after Voltaire’s novel

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Boston, 29 October 1956

Principal Characters

Candide, a Westphalian youth

Tenor

Cunegonde, his beloved

Soprano

Dr Pangloss, Candide’s tutor

Baritone

Maximilian, Cunegonde’s brother

Baritone

Paquette, Cunegonde’s maid

Mezzo-soprano

Old Lady

Soprano

Note:Candide was a critical failure when it was first produced in 1956 and there have been several revised versions. The most notable of these was the 1973 version, with a new libretto by Hugh Wheeler. New scenes were introduced, some drawn from Voltaire’s novel, others invented. A 1989 concert version, conducted by Bernstein and performed in London, contains elements from various earlier revisions and is the last form of the work to which the composer gave his approval.

Synopsis of the Plot

The details of the plot vary considerably between the different versions, but in all cases the story concerns the young Candide, who has been taught by Dr Pangloss that ‘everything happens for the best in the best of all possible worlds’. Armed with this unshakeable optimism, Candide sets out on his travels and experiences an endless series of disasters and difficulties, including war, rape, the apparent loss of Cunegonde, betrayal and the disappearance of Dr Pangloss at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Candide then leaves Europe in the company of an Old Lady and explores the New World and Eldorado. On his way back the intrepid traveller survives a shipwreck and returns, at last, to his Westphalian home. Here Candide acknowledges his disillusionment with Dr Pangloss’s theories and decides that, even though the world may be full of evil, we must all try to build our own lives on good, honest principles.

Music and Background

The overture to Candide could almost have been Bernstein’s signature tune – brilliant, up-tempo, highly charged – and it opens a piece whose hybrid nature as an up-market, philosophical, operatic operetta always caused problems in casting, staging and selling it to the public. Both words and music underwent extensive revisions over thirty years, with a conveyor belt of collaborating librettists. But the basic idea of high-spirited parody numbers survived in what amounts to an exhilarating mass-rape of European music history, buoyant with catchy, quick-change rhythms. The role of Cunegonde demands a soprano with the coloratura (i.e. embellishing) prowess of a prima donna assoluta; and the score is alive with character parts which are a gift to serious and maybe superannuated opera stars who want to let whatever is left of their hair down.

Highlights

Cunegonde’s exquisitely decorative jewel song ‘Glitter and be gay’ invariably stops the show, although the demands it makes of the singer have no doubt on many an occasion stopped the show ever happening. Candide’s two Act I ‘Meditations’ supply pathos. The big choral finale, ‘Make our garden grow’, is superior Hollywood and deeply moving.

Did You Know?

Lillian Hellman’s original libretto for Candide presented Voltaire’s parable on the evils of paternalistic government as a veiled attack on the McCarthy witchhunt trials.

Recommended Recording

June Andersen, Jerry Hadley, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, London Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Bernstein. DG 429 734-2. The legacy of two spectacular concert performances at the Barbican in 1989, with contributions from the Broadway veteran Adolph Green and a lot of chutzpah.

A Quiet Place (#ulink_a6ff097f-4c73-5e37-a389-3de0a4f12a25)

FORM: Opera in one act; in English

COMPOSER: Leonard Bernstein (1918–90)

LIBRETTO: Stephen Wadsworth

FIRST PERFORMANCE: Milan, 17 June 1983

Principal Characters

Sam, the father

Baritone

Sam Junior, his son