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Kurt Andersen:
Just a few short years ago, the media and the bookstores were full of
good news about something called the New Economy. According to believers,
this New Economy had hardly any downside, or losers, and no environmental
costs, and anybody who didn't have a million stock options by the time
he was 30 wasn't trying hard enough. It was the best of all possible worlds.
Now, the promise of the New Economy sounds like something out of Candide,
Voltaire's Candide -- the ironic philosophical tract from 1759 that made
a laughingstock out of over-optimism.
Nearly 200 years later, in 1956, Leonard Bernstein and Lillian Hellman
made a muscial out of Candide. What resulted was one of the most esteemed
failures in American theater. During the years since, Candide has been
revived many times. The New York Philharmonic made the great overture
to Candide a signature piece, and next week, for the first time, the Philharmonic
will play the entire score, with Kristin Chenoweth and Paul Groves singing
the leads. Sara Fishko looks back on the life of this singular musical.
Sara Fishko:
Anything about Candide, the musical, pretty much has to start with this:
(Candide Overture)
Sara Fishko:
Leonard Bernstein's playful, melodious overture is now a familiar concert
classic. But in 1956, during the run of the Candide, it stopped the show.
Nobody had ever heard of an overture stopping a show before!
Barbara Cook:
It's a great piece.
Sara Fishko:
Barbara Cook was Cunegonda in the original production of Candide.
Barbara Cook:
And people recognized that immediately. And they applauded and applauded
and applauded and applauded.
Sara Fishko:
Bernstein had been approached about Candide, in the early 1950's, by Lillian
Hellman, who saw in the original 18th century satire by Voltaire some
contemporary parallels. Voltaire had been inspired to write Candide after
a disastrous earthquake in Lisbon in 1755; it left no further doubt in
his mind that the current philosophy of "optimism," the notion
that all that was created in the world was necessarily the best it could
be, was absurd.
(Best Of All Possible Worlds)
Sara Fishko:
Two centuries later, Hellman saw post-war American optimism dashed by
McCarthy's witch-hunts, and set to work on what she hoped would be a scathing
adaptation of Voltaire for her own time. Hellman and Bernstein approached
poet Richard Wilbur to be their lyricist - by that time they'd already
tried James Agee and Dorothy Parker in the job. Hellman had liked Wilbur's
Moliere translation.
Richard Wilbur:
...and she said to me you've done fairly well by one witty Frenchman,
maybe you
can handle Voltaire.
Sara Fishko:
Handling Voltaire, as it turned out, was not all that easy. The material
was episodic, our hero Candide going from place to place to sort out these
questions
of optimism, disillusionment and reality...
Richard Wilbur:
The fact is that it's a very repetitious plot...people who want to believe
that all's for the best in this best of all possible worlds repeatedly
find themselves in nasty situations...in the Lisbon earthquake... the
Inquisition...that sort of thing, trying desperately to hold onto their
optimism.
Sara Fishko:
So there were struggles, and it was Hellman who seemed to suffer the most,
in
some cases due to her own expertise...
Richard Wilbur:
Whenever Lillian wrote a very good scene, somebody would say: that would
make a nice number! and it would be taken away from her. And she'd have
to write some more connective tissue.
Sara Fishko:
While Hellman struggled to add contemporary relevance to the Voltaire
original,
Bernstein was taking things in his OWN directions. He was composing what
he called a "comic operetta," songs bubbling over with exuberant
melodies, the music drawing on every musical and operatic cliché,
with good humor and fun. If the show was stopped by the overture, it was
stopped again not long after...
(Glitter And Be Gay)
Sara Fishko:
Glitter and Be Gay, a spoof of every operatic "jewel song" ever
written...
Richard Wilbur:
We talked about what kind of a joke in ought have in it. Lillian and Lenny
were please, and Lenny said, "well now can I put a few more ha ha
ha's in there?" And I said, "of course."
Sara Fishko:
Once again the score took center stage...and so did Barbara Cook, who
was not
an opera singer, but rather a theatre and cabaret singer...
Barbara Cook:
I had never sung anything even remotely that difficult or that high before.
These were e flats over high c and d flats, and 21 high c's were written
for that role. That kind of singing is a sports event. It's like walking
a high wire. I don't know how opera singers do it all the time, I swear.
Sara Fishko:
So there was the tuneful energy, the high-wire singing, and some risky
politics, too...
Richard Wilbur:
It seemed inevitable that we would take some kind of swipe at the House
UnAmerican Activities Committee in portraying the Spanish Inquisition.
Sara Fishko:
A memorable number had been contriubted by John LaTouche, another in the
log line of pre-Wilbur lyricists...
Richard Wilbur:
He wrote the funniest two lines in the show, which went: what a day, what
a day for an auto-da-fé.
(Auto-Da-Fé)
Barbara Cook:
What a day, what a day, for an auto-da-fé, executions are such
fun....
Marin Alsop:
It's a great day to watch some hangings and to watch people burn and fry
Sara Fishko:
Conductor Marin Alsop
Marin Alsop:
For me this captures everything about the piece, the idea that we're going
to have a wonderful time. Aren't we? We're going out to watch people suffer.
Sara Fishko:
But once again, as the music took unexpected turns, priorities shifted.
Some of the McCarthy analogy dropped away.
Richard Wilbur:
I think people would have been pretty dumb to miss it altogether. But
I don't think we were insistent on the theme by the time we opened in
New York.
Sara Fishko:
One can only imagine the excitement generated by a Broadway show based
on
Voltaire, written by Hellman, composed by Bernstein, Wilbur, Parker, Agee
and
LaTouche, staged by Tyrone Guthrie...
On opening night, Bernstein wished Barbara Cook good luck...
Barbara Cook:
And then he said, oh, he says, "Guess what? Maria Callas is out front."
And I thought, "Oh God, I don't need to hear that."
Sara Fishko:
Despite it's star power and spectacular score, Candide closed after only
73 performances at the Martin Beck. Broadway audiences found it rather
operatic;
opera audiences found it a bit "Broadway". Brooks Atkinson liked
it well enough,
but Walter Kerr dubbed it a disaster. Lillian Hellman called it her worst
experience working in the theatre.
But Candide did not disappear, far from it. In fact, it has actually
benefited over the years from more than a dozen productions with re-written
books, re-staging. That music just wouldn't die. Sometimes good, in this
case an incredible, infectious, lovable set of songs, does win out over
the most difficult of circumstances.
Candide is now to have a new concert version and next year a full scale
opera version, and on… and on… and on….
For Studio 360, I'm Sara Fishko.
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