After a series of short-lived revivals, a drastically refurbished version surfaced in 1973. With a new book by Hugh Wheeler, added lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and arena-style staging by Hal Prince, “Candide” finally gained popular success-though lost in the circuslike goings-on were the glitter of the music and almost any shred of seriousness. Another commercially successful rendering, by the New York City Opera in 1982, likewise undercut much of the Bernstein-Hellman message about the precariousness of idealism in a morally bankrupt world. “This ‘Candide’,” wrote conductor John Mauceri, “had turned into one long joke.”
Surprisingly, Bernstein himself never conducted a “Candide” until shortly before his death. Then, in December 1989, he weighed in with his own concert version, in a performance with the London Symphony Orchestra and chorus. Followers of Candide’s checkered saga have eagerly awaited the Deutsche Grammophon release of this version, and for good reason: reduced to the pure form of a concert, and beautifully sung by, among others, Jerry Hadley in the title role and June Anderson as his soiled love, Cunegonde, Bernstein’s brilliant pastiche effectively captures Voltaire’s dark satire of a faithless world. Not only does the exhilarating score, from the full-sailed overture to the lovely final chorus, sound fresher than ever, but the lyrics, by the matchlessly witty likes of John La Touche, Richard Wilbur and, here and there, the composer himself, emerge with delightful clarity.
The inventiveness of the music may be more evident in the play’s firs act (“Auto-da-fe,” “Oh, Happy We, “Glitter and Be Gay”) than in the somehow more predictable second. But stay tuned to the end for Candide’s Delius-like “Nothing More Than This,” with Bernstein’s own, love-struck lyric-and for the chastened finale, with a lyric close to verbatim Voltaire: “We’re neither pure nor wise nor good;/We’ll do the best we know./We’ll build our house, and chop our wood,/And make our garden grow.” The performance is billed as “final revised version.” Let’s hope so: this, at last, is the version that should lift “Candide” beyond cult status into immortality.
