Classical
UNG-AANG TALAY
BERNSTEIN: Candide A concert performance of the musical starring Jerry Hadley, June Anderson, Adolph Green, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, Della Jones, Kurt Ollmann and the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Full-screen, 147 min. (All regions, NTSC) |
Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story has been called the crown jewel of Broadway musicals. It was an immediate and massive hit on the stage and was quickly made into an equally successful movie. But its predecessor, Candide, got a chilly reception when it was premiered in 1956, and closed quickly.
It is hard to understand why. Bernstein's music is inspired, different but in no way inferior to the West Side Story score. Listening to the original cast recording with its stunning performances by Jerome Hines as Candide and Barbara Cook as Cunegonde, its sounds like a show that would attract crowds and keep them coming back for years.
But evidently even Bernstein wasn't satisfied with it. The problem, in part, was the book Lillian Hellman had written for it. It was Hellman, as Bernstein explains in a small speech he gives before Act II of the London performance recorded here, who suggested the idea of the production to him in the first place. Both relished Voltaire's ferociously satirical novella, with its hilarious attack on Leibnitz's philosophy of Optimism. Since the Creator was good, Leibnitz had written, the world he created must be the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire couldn't perceive this ideal in the world he saw around him, especially after the Lisbon earthquake killed tens of thousands of people, and lambasted the notion in his book, in which its hero Candide and his beloved Cunegonde try to interpret the ghastly things that happen to them in light of the Optimist philosophy they had been taught as children by the tutor, Dr Pangloss.
Both Hellman and Bernstein saw the destruction that had been unleashed by the Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witch-hunt as a modern counterpart to the evils diagnosed by Voltaire. But Hellman's book didn't lend itself well to the Broadway stage.
Over the years, many hand took part in rewriting and reshaping the book. The liner notes to this disc cite High Wheeler, John Wells, Bernstein, John La Touche, Dorothy Parker, Stephen Sondheim, and Richard Wilber, but in his speech Bernstein says that there were many others, too. The play only took its final shape in 1988 with the version seen here, adapted by Wells and Jonathan Miller.
It was recorded and released by Deutsche Grammophon in two different versions in 1991. One, a two-CD set of only the music recorded in a studio, was discussed in this column at the time. The other, a tape, long out of print, of the concert performance, that includes the spoken narration written by Bernstein and Wells and delivered with great panache by different members of the cast. Since then there have been numerous productions of this version, and theatregoers have come to appreciate it for the masterpiece it is.
The performance is very different from what is heard on the 52-year-old original cast recordings (still available on the Sony label). With its French operetta overture and aria-like solos (Candide's It Must Be So and Cunegonde's bel canto fireworks display, Glitter and Be Gay, among others), it is filled with operatic contours and gestures, and Bernstein cultivates them fully here. Tempos are often slower than in the old recording - this slowing down is especially noticeable in the overture - and famous opera singers taking all of the main roles except that of Dr Pangloss, sung by Broadway veteran Adolph Green.
All of them seem to be having a great time here. There is nothing to support the complaint by some contributors to the Amazon website that this music should only be sung by performers who have their roots in Broadway, not by opera singers visiting the musical slums. Jerome Hines, in the original recording, was an opera singer, and Hadley easily matches his performance here. June Anderson's Cunegonde is funny and dazzlingly sung, in no way inferior to Barbara Cook. Less attractive vocally are Christa Ludwig (Irra Petina was earthier and more sardonic in the old version) and Nicolai Gedda, although both have great charisma on stage and the audience loves them.
Many of the funniest lines are given to Dr Pangloss, and Green delivers them with Gilbert and Sullivan-style zest and precision. While teaching his young pupils about Nature and its perfection in this best of all possible worlds, one of them objects: "What about snakes?"
Pangloss's reply: "Twas Snake that tempted Mother Eve/ Because of Snake we now believe/ That though depraved/ We can be saved/ From hellfire and damnation,/ Because of snakes temptation./ If Snake had not seduced our lot,/ And primed us for salvation,/ Jehovah could not pardon all/ The sins that we call cardinal,/ Involving bed and bottle./ Now on to Aristotle."
This kind of funny, edged irony abounds throughout Candide. Listen carefully to the syphilis-ravaged Pangloss's account of how the disease came to infect him, and to The Old Lady's I Am So Easily Assimilated.
The London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus give Bernstein their all, and the whole performance has a feeling of occasion that was not as perceptible in the CD set. The DVD, transferred fairly recently from the tape, is sharp and clear, with only a slight bleeding of bright reds and a lack of the last degree of clarity testifying to its non-digital origin. The recorded sound is clear and brilliant. There is even a dts option, although to my ear it sounds best when played in two-track stereo.
I bought my NTSC copy from amazon.com, but a PAL version should be available from European vendors.
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