Last Tuesday night was the opening of New York City Opera's Candide, the final work for this spring season.  And what a way to finish the year!  If you are within 100 miles of the State Theater during the month of April, there is absolutely no reason you can't come down and see this marvelous, historic, trend-setting production.  Also -- New York City Opera's "Opera for All" program is offering $25 orchestra level seats!  Seriously now, if you come to Candide because of my gushing response and find yourself truly disappointed, then contact me and we'll do a depression screening on you.  If everything checks out and you still have heavy-duty problems with spending 25 bucks to see theater so thrilling and polished, then I'll convince New York City Opera to give you a refund.  Except to prove your dissatisfaction, you're going to have to sit through another performance with me next to you.  And if you smile just once during the performance, bet's off!  It's impossible to watch this production without grinning like a goon.

 

When New York City Opera promotes, advertises, and generally raises hell about its production, it has every right to create as big a hullabaloo as it wants.  Candide was practically resurrected at the City Opera back in the early 1980s.

 

 

Candide is essentially an operetta based on the novella of nearly the same name by Voltaire.  The great thing about this work is that it's sung in English and the libretto is nearly perfection.  It manages to be profound and insouciant at the same time, and it's all done with a brevity that easily fits on the supertitles (which you generally don't need anyway because of the superb diction from the performers).  As a result, not much preparation is needed to have a rollicking good time.

 

Candide was a French satirical work written by Voltaire during the Enlightenment.  In it, he railed against the dominant philosophical system of his day -- the theory of Optimism created by Leibniz.  Optimism is the idea that humanity must, and does, live in the best of all possible worlds.  Why?  Because God created the world.  And if God is presumed to be a benevolent deity, then surely the world he created is the best possible one for us.  For those who remember high school calculus, Leibniz is the also the guy who invented calculus backwards, using the integral instead of differentiation, as Sir Issac Newton did.  Surely for a man to have created the calculus backwards, without a purpose in mind (Newton only came up with it because he needed more advanced techniques to describe his theories of mechanics), he needed to believe fervently that he lived in the best of all possible worlds... otherwise, why not just forget it all and toss back a drink at the local watering hole?

 

Anyhow, in 1755 there was a catastrophic earthquake in Lisbon which occurred on All Saint's Day, and it strongly influenced many thinkers, including Voltaire, to reject the indiscriminately saccharine ideas of Optimism.  To get oriented to this opera, all you need to know is that Candide's main character, is well, Candide.  He is young, innocent, and not super-bright.  He represents the tabula rasa which Voltaire uses to prove his point.  Candide falls in love with the local beauty in their idyllic little village of Westphalia, Cunegonde (her name means something unique to women, not necessarily G-rated).  These lovebirds and their friends are indoctrinated by their teacher, Dr. Pangloss, in philosophies reminiscent of Optimism.  Candide is banished for seeking extracurricular pleasures from Cunegonde and henceforth begins a whirlwind saga where harsh realities of a non-Optimism world are seen.  Rest assured, though, that there is a happy ending.

 

I'm not going to say any more because when you enter the State Theater to see Candide, you're really boarding a ride that exports you on a journey all over the world.  The sets are magnificently exuberant and the singers bring you into their reverie, performing not only on stage but out among the audience as well.  The entire experience is an in-your-face, let's-go-along-for-the-ride kind of evening that creates a visceral thrill rarely had in a theater that's not IMAX.  All throughout, the genius of Leonard Bernstein's score evokes exotic locations with brilliant, foreign motifs.  But this is also the man who brought us West Side Story and Our Town, so in climaxes like "Make Our Garden Grow," the music goes straight to the heart and there are few dry eyes in the house.

 

I was so excited on opening night that I risked certain banishment from the ushers and tried to snap a picture of the delicious staging.  It didn't quite come out -- all the more reason for you come see it yourself!

 

As with all opening nights, it was a different sort of crowd.  More high-rollers, you might say -- snappily dressed and ordering champagne at the interval.  From the few I spoke with, it seemed many had seen the production in the past and couldn't pass up seeing it again.  The elderly couple next to me were in tears at the end of "Make Our Garden Grow."  They also watched the performance through opera glasses, which was odd.  You have to understand that I had seats in row D, which can't be more than 15 feet from the stage.  Unless your vision is egregious, the only thing opera glasses might do from row D is perhaps to let you see the pores on Cunegonde's face!  I'm definitely looking forward to getting older.

 

Stephen and Gail, a middle-aged couple I spoke to at the interval, remarked that they thought "every [opera] house needs a good frolic now and then, at least once a season."  Certainly, Candide fits the bill for New York City Opera this spring.  They reminded me that next door at the Met is a fantastic production of Hansel and Gretel -- another exuberant and over-the-top opera with creative staging that certainly could be their frolic for the year.

 

Oh, and one last thing: I was saying that Candide was practically resurrected at City Opera. About that -- you see, Candide initially opened on Broadway as a musical in 1956 and was poorly received although Bernstein's music was undeniably profound and charming -- so it became sort of a cult hit.  Despite this, the production itself had a hard time finding traction anywhere.  So it was re-written and re-worked over the years into other versions with moderate success -- the most popular of which actually omitted more than half of the musical numbers!  Finally in the late 1970s, opera companies began expressing interest in a version truer to the original, with more of Bernstein's score intact. One of City Opera's benefactors then approached Beverly Sills with funding, and Bernstein set to work on it with director Hal Prince.  Shortly thereafter, a new two-act version debuted at New York City Opera in 1982, and it has since become the standard version performed in opera companies around the world.

 

This is the production that made Candide the great hit that it is today.  It all started here --and the tradition is still going strong. You absolutely have to come see it.

 

By the way, as if the opera weren't enough excitement, while you're at the State Theater you might as well check out some of the fantastic non-acoustic art they have in the public spaces.  On the opening night of Candide, I met up with Andrew, my old roommate from college -- it had been nearly four years since we'd seen each other!  He's working in the city now and has a keen eye for visual art.  He noticed that there was a Jasper Johns sculpture hanging on the first floor's west side lobby.  We checked with a very nice volunteer manning the information desk named Ellen.  Indeed, it was a Jasper Johns --whose work was recently featured in a special exhibit at the Met Museum.  In fact, the entire theater is filled with notable art-- most noticeable perhaps being the two enormous female nudes at either side of the promenade, each carved out of a single block of Carrara marble!  So there is truly something for everyone here at City Opera.  But please come more for the music than the two nudes, for they are idealized and abstract whereas the music is not; particularly with Candide, which is as accessible, entertaining, charming, profound, and giddy as you can get in an opera house!