Opera Review: The Way the Big Wheel Spins

The New York City Opera bets the farm on Candide.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

The cast of Candide hoofs through "What's the Use?" in Act II of the Leonard
Bernstein comedy. Photo by Sarah Shartz © 2017 The New York City Opera. 

In 1982, the legendary Broadway director Hal Prince mounted Leonard Bernstein’s Candide at the New York City Opera. That show did much to salvage the reputation of the composer's most problematic stage work. Candide first came to life as a Broadway musical. It bombed, was rewritten (with a new libretto) and rebuilt an operetta with slight plot differences. The Prince solution was to present a sort of hybrid, a revised, two-act comedy that filtered Voltaire's cynicism through Bernstein's gift for a good tune supported by musical references to most of the major opera composers that had come before.