Candide...revisions...revisions....and more revisions...

So this is my first post for the semester…

I decided to take this class because I really know very little about American opera. I’ve seen a lot of Broadway shows, and focused on a lot of foreign opera, so this seemed like a really good way to bridge the gap.

After all the discussion in the class with different versions and such, I did some research on Candide, and this is what I came up with.

Candide has undergone many transformations since its original edition was presented as a musical comedy in 1956, then became operetta, was performed many times in concert form, and finally is finding a place in opera houses.

The libretto is adapted from Voltaire’s novel of the same name by Lillian Hellman. Rumor had it that she was interested in drawing a parallel between Candide’s blind faith and the rampant paranoia of McCarthyism at the time. Candide, a Westphalian youth who believes fervently in the teaching of his tutor, Pangloss, that everything that happens must be for the best, plunges into travel and experiences an endless series of disasters, including the apparent death of the woman he loves, Cunegonde, and the execution of Pangloss in the Spanish Inquisition. Candide’s travels take him to the New World in the company of an Old Lady and the miraculously saved Cunegonde, to the fabled land of Eldorado, back to Europe surviving a shipwreck and eventually back to Westphalia. Here, Candide finally repudiates Pangloss’s philosophy and resolves to try and build a good, honest life for himself and his companions.

This general description applies to all versions of Candide, although the details vary enormously in the several revisions that were undertaken. Most notable of these is the version staged by Harold Prince in 1973, to a new libretto by Hugh Wheeler (Hellman having withdrawn permission to use her words). Wheeler provided a new selection of scenes, some from Voltaire and others newly invented. Martin, a pessimistic counterpart to Pangloss played by the same actor, disappeared in this version, but in compensation the Pangloss also played Voltaire as narrator, as well as the Latin American Governor. The maid Paquette and Cunegonde’s brother Maximilian, minor parts in the first version, became moderately important in the new one. The zany vaudeville atmosphere and irreverent tone of this production proved far more acceptable to audiences than the statelier format of the original; unfortunately, the score itself suffered severely, with five songs omitted and the rest rescored for a tiny ensemble (some new songs were added as well). A version made for the New York City Opera (and recorded in slightly fuller form in 1986) attempted to restore the missing music from 1956 within Wheeler’s framework. A 1988 Scottish Opera production (supervised, like the previous two editions, by John Mauceri) made in consultation with the composer returned for the most part to Hellman’s sequence of scenes while retaining some of Wheeler’s additions, with revisions in libretto and lyrics by John Wells. A 1989 concert performance conducted by Bernstein in London (and the recording made at that time) used this edition as the ‘final revised version’, the last form of the work to which he gave his approval. To the 1956 score, it adds material from the 1973 edition, music discarded before the initial production, and numbers written for revivals in 1958 and 1971.