Ashley Smith / Wide Eyed Studios

Famously a failure (73 performances) in its original production directed by Tyrone Guthrie, nearly 20 years later it would begin to find more popular success in a new version helmed by Harold Prince. By this point, the original book (by Lillian Hellman, no less) had been jettisoned, and many of the lyrics (Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, Dorothy Parker!) also replaced with newer ones by Stephen Sondheim and others.

Prince would continue to work on Candide in various versions, modifying it further for opera companies including New York City Opera: the first time I saw it was when they brought it to Los Angeles in 1982.

That Prince and company’s emendations made Candide more successful is a matter of fact. Whether it improved the show is anything but. At some of gayest dinner parties I’ve ever attended, this was debated with a kind of fervor I’d previously experienced only through arguments about the Warren Commission Report.

And similarly, we will most likely never have the evidence we’d need to reach a satisfying conclusion.

The legendarily controlling Bernstein Industrial Complex has done what they can to bury the original version, refusing permission to revive it even in a limited way. Luckily, some of the delicious lyrics now rewritten can be heard on the original Broadway cast album, a priceless souvenir that also preserves Barbara Cook’s hors concours Cunegonde.

Ashley Smith / Wide Eyed Studios

It’s essentially a mash-up of Prince versions that’s the current preferred performing edition. Admittedly, it solves some of the show’s narrative problems and has some comic verve. But to me, it takes the original’s delicious, ambiguous tartness and substitutes it with something closer to the fluorescent sweet-and-sour sauce that used to come in packets with Chinese takeout food. Can this really be the best of all possible worlds?

Personally, I don’t think it is. But a rousing, effervescent production by the Curtis Institute of Music went a long way to make me reconsider that.

Go big or go home, as they say—and that certainly goes for director Emma Griffin’s approach here. Rather than try to impose order or logic on the narrative (trust me: it wouldn’t work), Griffin goes the other way, embracing the chaos and silly fun. What world we’re in is never entirely clear, so I can only describe it as I saw it.

In what looks like a catering hall or staging area in a large, improbably pink hotel filled with “wedding chairs”, we meet a collection of people costumed across the widest imaginable spectrum. Cowboys in chaps hobnob with knights in armor. A modish, contemporary Kardashian-type flirts with a jump-suited workman. (They will turn out to be Cunegonde and Candide.) While it’s not clear what generates the action, it looks to me like a company gathered for some kind of rehearsal. (Amy Rubin and Oona Curley are the scenic and lighting designers respectively; Terese Wadden and Brittany Rappise did costumes, hair, and makeup).

Let the games begin… and they do, with antic energy. (Jeffrey L. Page provides often delightfully manic choreography.)

Ashley Smith / Wide Eyed Studios

If I don’t say more, it’s because: 1) I’m not sure how to describe it; and 2) it doesn’t matter. Somehow in all the silliness (pratfalls and slapstick included), the story gets told. And even occasionally in a way that’s moving—the final “Make Your Garden Grow” tableau, with theatre masking pulled and the entire company including the orchestra standing onstage together—made me tear up.

It works in part because the company—essentially all opera singers in training—embrace the theatrical challenges with so much gusto and enthusiasm. A few are especially good at it, but everybody pitches in. It’s also a smart idea to diversify narration, usually given by Pangloss, among members of the ensemble, giving them stronger character profiles.

And it works because the musical values here are exceptional, starting with an orchestra under the baton of David Charles Abell delivering an sparkling reading of the score. I can’t single out every notable performance—there are too many—but Landry Allen is a charmingly teddy bear-ish Candide with a meltingly sweet lyric tenor that caresses every phrase.

Emilie Kealani (Cunegonde) nails her many acuti and has a lot of comic bravado, though in the more lyric stretches, her vibrato can be intrusive. Baritone Emilio Vásquez is a commanding Pangloss (and how nice to hear this role truly sung). Katie Trigg very nearly steals the show as the Old Lady, singing superbly and acting with just the right mix of broadness and finesse. (It’s a stroke of genius to costume her as the spitting image of Mae West in Myra Breckinridge.) And finally, let me mention Emily Damasco as Paquette—even with limited vocal opportunities, her gorgeous soprano registers unmistakably as the sound of a rising star.