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Televised January 12, 2005
Leonard Bernstein's brilliant comic operetta, Candide (1956) has had several resurrections and various revisions. It scored a critical success in spite of its box-office failure on Broadway with a run of only seventy-three nights. A superb original-cast LP kept it alive for many until a Hal Prince revival and bastardized revision in 1973 ran for more than two years on Broadway. An opera house version exists that premiered in 1982. The New York City Opera performed it in 1982 and 2005 and the Chicago Lyric in 1994.
This concert version (109 minutes, 21 minutes less than the ample 1993 version Bernstein recorded in 1989) comes live via PBS from Avery Fischer Hall with the New York Philharmonic conducted with pizazz by Marin Alsop. It features mainly Broadway singers with the exception of Paul Groves as Candide and Thomas Allen as Pangloss and narrator. Lonny Price directs for laughs with plenty of comic props, silly high jinks and slapstick. He turns the satire into a circus romp with his Broadway leads: Kristin Chenoweth's Cunegonde, Patti LuPone's Old Lady, Jeff Blumenkrantz's Maximilian and Janine LaManna's Paquette.
One example of Price's Broadway shtick has LuPone, a big audience favorite who won a Tony for her Evita, wheel in Chenoweth, who played Glinda in Wicked, on a chaise lounge. LuPone acknowledges the applause by shaking hands with the first violinist and conductor Alsop. Then she sits beside Chenoweth as the orchestral introduction for her big number begins. Chenoweth stops the orchestra and tells LuPone, "My song; you go." LuPone eventually starts away, but stops until Chenoweth again orders, "Go."
Bald Jeff Blumenkrantz looks twice sister Cunegonde's age and gives the lie to his preening vanity about his beauty. He manages better his rage at Candide, a bastard, for daring to love his sister. Another departure from his role as a heavy has him even look attractive in a long blonde wig as a female.
To the sweet sound of "Oh, Happy We," Candide and Cunegonde sing in perfect harmony about their disparate views of marriage. He, chubby naïevté in Bavarian shorts and shirt, sees bucolic family farming, but she, beautifully slim in a revealing frilly gown, envisions expensive jewels and travel. They cavort on...