You were dead, you know
Three-time Met régisseuse Mary Zimmerman is taking it to the Windy City, helming a “newly adapted” Candide for Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. “Danny Pelzig choreographs the cataclysmic events that ensue.” [broadwayworld.com]
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Oh Lord, there’s no end to it. How many dozen versions does that make now?
It’s a great, enticing score, but directors (it’s always the director) have to start admitting that if all their predecessors’ attempts have failed to “fix” the show, they are unlikely to be the one who miraculously succeeds.
Will Chicago be the ‘best of all possible worlds’?
One can only hope so.
Happy Birthday Maestro Bernstein.
Love him or hate him, he was quite the blazing comet. One that made the world a better place.
I count this as the fifth “compleatly revised” libretto. There was Hellman’s version, then Hugh Wheeler’s (which was later revamped from one to two acts without much change) and then Bernstein and John Wells had a crack at it in 88, shortly before the composer died. Post-Mortum, the book was totally rewritten for the Royal National Theater by John Caird, and now Zimmerman.
After her Sonnambula at the Met I can only imagine what she will do to this wonderful piece. Maybe set it in an insane asylum and have the chorus in straight jackets?
As long as they’re singing those arrangements, I’m willing to see it….gorgeous score!
I’m buying my tickets now – planning to see it the same day I see Lyric Opera’s “MacBeth” with Thomas Hampson.
You might want to look at Zimmerman’s work in straight theater. Her play METAMORPHASIS remains, ten years later, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen onstage. I was a kid, I think I was about 11 or 12, and I was just enthralled. Her ARABIAN NIGHTS too, was just stunningly beautiful. Give her a break.
People seem to keep forgetting that Dessay requested (some say demanded) an non-traditional production of Sonnambula. Zimmerman did not work in a vacuum and she did the best she could with the instructions she was given. The woman is a brilliant theatre director and a brilliant dramaturg. Opera may not be her forte, but she certainly can’t do worse to Candide than other directors. In fact she may pull it off.
I understand that the provisions of Hellman will make it impossible to mount the original version ever again to see if it might actually be better than all the dross that has followed it. I’ve seen at least three of the revisions and have given up ever going again, so puerile and chaotic are they. The fact that lyrics to some of the original songs have been changed seems like total vandalism to me.
I disagree that it is futile to try yet again. The score is brilliant and deserves to be heard in a dramatic context that makes it seem like a partner in the drama rather than a refuge from all the spoken dreck surrounding the numbers.
Whatever one might think of Ms Zimmermann’s MET productions (I found the Lucia engrossing, the others much less so) she has a proven track record on adaptations; I would like to see her given a fair shot at it rather than be dismissed out of hand just because others botched the job.
I’ve read the Hellman Book, and yes, it is in fact more succesful than what followed. It’s pretty far from Voltaire, but it is much more effective as a work of theater.
This production is also headed for Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre November 26th – January 9th
There was also a “pre-Broadway” revision that played on the West Coast ca. 1971. I only remember that Mary Costa and Frank Poretta were the stars.
It’s only fair to note that in some cases the changes are reversions to previous lyrics for the songs. The “schoolroom” version of “Best of All Possible Worlds,” for example, is a John Latouche lyric that was replaced by the “wedding” one heard on the OCR. (A version impossible to include in any version trying to follow Voltaire more closely, as Candide is not approved as a husband for Cunegonde.) There are in fact two full sets of lyrics for the song, both pre-Broadway, that have never been recorded.
I take the point that we should wait for Zimmerman to fail before dismissing her efforts. It’s just that after three dozen tries (the list of five major libretto versions by no means exhausts the variants — for example, I’ve heard it fervently stated that Michael Stewart’s revision of Hellman for the first London production is the best version of all), the odds seem vanishingly small that anyone can do the job. But let her have her shot, by all means. And the next dozen after her….
It’s such a crappy piece in general I can’t understand why anyone would bother. I’ve seen three productions and sung in another one myself where the director (as untalented a dog as they come) had a go at rewriting it himself. Such a colossal waste of time and effort. Bernstein failed with this one, and I am sure he knew it too. When will everyone else wake up and realize it?
I’m very close to saying something quite nasty to you. Listen to “Make Our Garden Grow” and then get back to me.
Say whatever you want. That is, after all, what we are supposed to do here. I am not defined by the opinions of others, but I am very interested in hearing the opinions of others. That is what Parterre is (mostly) about, the dialogue.
As for “Make our garden grow”, that is one of the better moments in the piece, but I can think of about 1001 other things that I (and most other people) would rather hear. I doubt that there is one person on this planet for whom Candide is one of their favorite operas? music theater pieces? a hybrid of both? There is probably not one person on Parterre who would rank it even in their top 30 or 40 pieces.
Ummm, me! I think Candide is a fascinating score, the afore-mentioned “Make our Garden Grow,” which warms me every time I hear it, plus the Overture, “Glitter and be Gay,” “It Must be So,” and particularly the haunting “El Dorado.” That’s already more things I look forward to hearing than there are in Siegfried. I would love to hear “What a day for an auto-da-fe” interpolated into Don Carlo.
It belongs in a special category of “Too Good for Broadway but Not Quite Opera,” along with “Juno,” “Greenwillow,” “Most Happy Fella,” and “Sweeny Todd.”
And Kristin Chenoweth – who I think of as perhaps the only person in the world who might actually make me consider attending her church if she asked and if everyone there were as cool as she – singing Glitter and Be Gay makes me just about as happy as I can get.
Yep, another Candide-lover here. I once read somewhere that the overture was Bernstein’s most often-performed work, which if true would be a fairly impressive stat given that he also composed West Side Story.
I don’t know the whole piece, but Glitter and be Gay is one of my favourite things.
If I’m not pure, at least my jewels are.
B.A.B. : Your description of it as “Too good for Broadway but not quite opera” is an excellent one.
Still, about 4 people chimed in and said “Oh well I like it!” (or parts of it), which was what I expected to happen.
That isn’t exactly an overwhelming wave of support for the piece.
A few nice moments does not a great piece make.
It’s a bore and the characters more or less deserve what they get!
I’ll chime in as a 5th person who likes (most of) Candide. In the big picture, though, my vote doesn’t change the overall result: underwhelming wave of support.
As for the characters deserving what they get, I thought that was the point.
armer [9.1.1.3], if the frequency with which the Candide overture is played on (Irish) RTE Lyric FM’s breakfast show alone is anything to go by, then I can believe it. However, I would have to call it an oppressive stat.