review leonard bernsteins place paris opera

The idea came from playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman, who was fingered as a Communist in 1951 and who a year later had to defend herself before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee.Īs a result of her friction with the HUAC, Hellman was blacklisted by her employers in Hollywood. Loosely based on the 1759 novel by Voltaire, Candide first began to occupy Bernstein's attention during the so-called McCarthy Era. In spite of its success, it was not a work he could allow to rest comfortably on the shelf. As much for its political content as for its music, Candide meant a great deal to Bernstein. One wonders if it would have carried that subtitle had the composer not died just months before the album went to market. The edition prepared for the Barbican performances was recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and issued in 1991 as the 'final revised version'. Louis program booklet, ' 'The Sheep Song' was among the numbers dropped,' and 'a few more bars were restored in the Inquisition scene. As Humphrey Burton, Bernstein's most recent biographer, points out in his essay for the Opera Theatre of St. In December of 1989, a year and a half after the Scottish Opera production, the London Symphony Orchestra invited Bernstein to conduct a concert performance of Candide at London's Barbican Centre. Indeed, since its premiere, Mauceri's version has often been described as 'definitive'.īut how can there be a 'definitive' version of an operetta whose development has been as circuitous as the globe-trotting itinerary of its characters? Even the 'definitive' version staged in Glasgow couldn't satisfy Bernstein completely. It was stitched together not by Bernstein but by conductor John Mauceri, but Bernstein was on hand to supervise Mauceri's edition as it was readied for a production by the Scottish Opera, and he approved of the results.

It's true that the 1988 version is the final version with which Bernstein had a personal involvement. It's hard to imagine there will ever be a truly final version of Leonard Bernstein's Candide.

Review leonard bernsteins place paris opera