Music Review: Bernstein's Candide, in German, in Berlin

Candide

Music by Leonard Bernstein

Book/Lyrics by Lillian Hellman, Hugh Wheeler, Stephen Sondheim, John Mauceri (and others)

Starring Paul Curievici and Meechot Marrero

Directed by Barrie Kosky

Conducted by Jordan de Souza

Berlin Comic Opera (Komische Opera Berlin), Unter der Linden

December 9, 2018

What to make of Candide, Bernstein’s 1956 operetta/opera? It has seemingly received more rewrites than professional performances, but remains a staple of US college opera and musical theater troupes. It’s based on the Voltaire 30-scene novella of 1759 that details a young rake’s progress across the globe, all written with the apparent point of Voltaire’s disproving Leibnitz’ doctrine of optimism. This doctrine attempted to rationalize evil in the world. It stated that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and that since God is omniscient, he obviously has chosen the best possible world for us, with evil intentionally present as a contrast to good, so we recognize the good. Voltaire thought this was nonsense, and wrote a novella depicting the evil and folly of all of the leading institutions of his day: the Catholic church, government, the common man, business, etc., mocking the idea that this all could have been created by a Flawless Designer. Scenes of religious persecution, prurient priests and politicians, and corruption at all levels shocked the 18^th century audience and led to the book’s censorship across Europe. It’s cynicism is far more to modern tastes. In adapting it for the stage Bernstein worked with various talented collaborators, but there have always been problems. The initial one act Lillian Hellman version was jettisoned and expanded, creating various 3 hour+ versions with lots of music but which often feels way too extended. There have been revisions to the book, and deletions/additions of music  made upon virtually each revival, including work by musical theater luminaries like Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince (West Side Story, Follies), Hugh Wheeler (books for A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd). Interestingly, while much of the creative input is by musical theater types, Candide is often performed by opera singers, since the music is demanding vocally and orchestrally (the overture is performed often as part of symphony concerts). This leads to a number of quandries. Should its style be that of a comic opera (like The Barber of Seville) , a European operetta (like The Merry Widow), or a Broadway musical? What kind of singers? How long a duration? The very structure of it is challenging, since the plot was designed by Voltaire as less of an architectural novel than a series of illustrative scenes, rather like Don Quixote. How does a composer hold all this together thematically and dramatically?

The Komische Oper Berlin version premiered this year, and did not really solve many of these problems, but at least intermittently entertained. This company makes its trade doing rare European comic operettas like Oscar Straus’ The Pearls of Cleopatra and Offenbach’s Bluebeard, but also does La Boheme, West Side Story, and Fiddler on the Roof.  So they seem ideally placed to cross the opera/operetta divide required by Candide. The singers were very appropriate, with light voices that projected the (German translated) text well, fine comic acting skills, and vocal technique up to Bernstein’s requirements (e.g. Cunegonde’s “Glitter and Be Gay” is a modern coloratura showpiece). The production by Brit Barry Kosky dispensed with formal sets almost entirely, relying instead on hundreds of vibrant costumes, intelligent lighting design, and the actors’ skills to portray the many scene changes from England to Uruguay to Brazil to Venice to Paris. 

This ever-morphing costume design was a consistent delight, and the performance rarely bogged down, despite the book’s limitations.

Most reviews I have dug up from over the years mostly take the form: “This performance of Candide failed to excite because of XYZ, but of course Bernstein’s magnificent score was a strength”, I am not so sure about how good this score really is. The first third of it is wonderful, and was matched in Berlin with fast, comic staging, and raced along at breathless tempo. But after that, the text and music became less vibrant and compelling, and the lack of any linear evolution in the plot made the second half slow going. Its notable that virtually all of the music that Bernstein excerpts in his rousing overture comes from the first hour of the opera. Did he run out of inspiration later? The ending ensemble “Make our Garden Grow” is affecting, as Candide decides that the only solution to all the evil in the world is accept the reality of life, make your own bed, get married to the one you love, and retreat to simpler things. This number and several others reminded me of Bernstein’s Mass (1971) which also ends with a sort of retreat from the world’s failings into communal living. But there are long stretches of less inspired music here, and I think Lillian Hellman might have been right in her original shorter version…her instincts as a dramatist were not bad, I think! It seems that these longer versions are designed to honor Bernstein’s score and perform as much of it as possible, but I am not convinced that this is a good choice either dramatically or musically. In the end, Candide feels like a flash inspiration by Bernstein that prompted an outpouring of wildly inconsistent music and a dramatically problematic story, and producers have been struggling to make sense of this ever since.

Notes: The Comic Opera performs in an intimate 1891 hall near the main drag Unter der Linden, now seating 1200. The elaborate hall stylings reflect the popularity of operetta in that era, when the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan and the Strauss family were wildly popular. 

They nicely provide subtitles (in four languages!) on the seat in front of you. I was not distracted at all by seeing the operetta in German, as the translation seemed crisp and idiomatic, and the German language seemed to connect Candide to the classic German/Austrian operettas of yore. There was a nice mixed audience of young/old, tourist/local.