Candide, based on Voltaire's novelette of 1759 (see Links page) opened on Broadway in 1956 and was not
received well by the critics of the time. After a run of fewer than eighteen performances it closed.What had
promised so much had failed to deliver. Lillian Hellman, who wrote the book took the brunt. She felt very bitter
about this and refused to discuss the project again. Whether this was justified is open to debate but I believe
that the different aims of the composer and the writer was one of the significant factors. Lenny wanted to
recreate the whimsical nature of Candide in the music. This he did magnificently and called it a Valentine to
Europe during a BBC interview at the time of the 1957 London run. Incidentally during the same interview
Candide was called simply a pastiche. Bernstein retorted that of course it was a pastiche, that was the whole
point. Hellman used Candide as a statement on the aftermath of the McCarthy era. The show was starting to
turn round and make money but was still closed by its producer Ethel Reiner. Another theory was that the
show was closed after the producer and Lillian Hellman had a major falling out. Bernstein backed Hellman
and severely roasted a (London) Times critic for 'daring to say that Ms Hellman had no style'.

Candide is a wonderful piece, has been treated many times with each version having its own merits. The
original cast recording is still considered the quintessential recording (even over Bernstein's own 1989 version).
From first hand the one act Hal Prince theatre production is fine in its own right and the final opera house
version of 1988 is as musical, witty, accessible and grand as opera can get. Below is the article 'Candide or
No Exit' by John Mauceri from the 1988 Scottish Opera production . John has been significantly involved in
the development of Candide.
 

Candide or No Exit
by John Mauceri
 

Just about every opera we know is a reworking of the original composition by the composer. After
experiencing the rehearsal period, opening night, critics' response or perhaps the desire to rethink the
work years later, many composers have decided to rewrite their operas. For some works, like Don
Carlos, the process is fairly well known, and for others, like Traviata and Butterfly it is practically
unknown to the general public. Broadway musicals have a more open history. Public consciousness of
the adding and subtracting of songs and dialogue in the out of town try-out is a fairly well-known process
and in our own time which has begun to value the restoration of the Broadway musical it has become
common for previously cut material and original orchestrations to find their way back into contemporary
performances and recordings.
When On Your Toes opened on Broadway in 1983 with its original orchestrations, arrangements and
complete score (as well as its original director and choreographer from its first appearance in 1936), few
people seemed willing to support the concept of the integrity of the Broadway score. The songs were
never in doubt of course — provided you could add a few extra hits to a revival, but never had anyone
dared to keep the dance arrangements and orchestrations intact. The wisdom of the time was to write
new ones. (This of course still unfortunately happens, as with London's recent Kiss Me Kate which
jettisoned all the original dance music and replaced it with new music and totally new orchestrations.
Certainly more than 40% of the evening's music is composed/ arranged by someone other than Cole
Porter.) Kiss Me Kate at least was a hit in 1946. But what of the flops? What if Puccini had thrown
out Butterfly after his opening night fiasco? (or Verdi with Traviata? Puccini and Verdi were fortunate
in that they lived in an era which gave the composer a second or third chance. This rarely happens today
in the world of opera/ music theater.

Robert Rounseville (Candide), Max Adrian (Pangloss),
                                                                                   original production
 

When Candide opened on Broadway in 1956 it was not a success. Its out of town tryout in Boston was
unhappy. (The staid people of Boston still can recall Tyrone Guthrie's pre-curtain speech begging their
indulgence by telling them 'Keep your peckers up!'). The work was called 'a comic operetta' but there
was nothing funny in Lillian Hellman's book. It was ponderous and pedagogical, springing more from her
anger at the McCarthy trials than from any attempt at representing Voltaire. While Leonard Bernstein
had captured the spirit of the French book, the American playwright seemingly had no intention of doing
anything of the kind. Opera singers played the major roles, except for actor Max Adrian as Pangloss and
a young and inexperienced lyric soprano Barbara Cook, as Cunegonde. Operatic works had occasionally
been tried on Broadway — and rarely with commercial success: Porgy and Bess in the 1930s, Street
Scene in the 1940s and at the time of Candide, Menotti opened The Saint of Bleeker Street and The
Consul and the Great White Way. Bernstein's mentor Marc Blitzstein had adapted Lillian Hellman's The
Little Foxes for his opera Regina, but again without making money — Broadway's cruel measure of success.
But Candide would not just die. It came to London in 1957 with some new songs but it did not succeed there
either. Until 1971, when Gordon Davidson directed a new production in Los Angeles with the hopes of a
Broadway run, the Hellman script was adapted and Bernstein was still writing material for poor Candide.
The Davidson production got all the way to Washington's Kennedy Center hut closed there before it could
travel five hours north to New York. But it still would not die. The next year Hal Prince decided to make a
completely new version without one line from Lillian Hellman. The English born playwright Hugh Wheeler
wrote a short and very funny book to accommodate a one act cartoon-like version of Candide. This time
Bernstein had no hand in the music, preferring to stay at Harvard for his Norton lectures and letting me act
in loco compositoris, using his music. The puzzle was to fit pre-existing music to a new set of situations and
locales armed with two volumes of extra material written from 1956 until 1971 as well as the 1956 published
score, I was allowed to play in the garden with Hal and Hugh and Steve Sondheim. It was a magic time for
me. Bernstein came to the dress rehearsal in Brooklyn and seemed to love it. He saw it one more time and
seemed to hate it. But it was a hit. It sold tickets and for the first time in Candide's history it was making
money. After its limited run in Brooklyn it opened on Broadway, slightly enlarged, but still in one act and it
ran over a year. Once it closed, this little and funny Candide became and still is an immensely popular property
forsmall theater companies throughout America. But more than half the score was missing from that version
and its orchestration for thirteen instruments is clever but hardly the sound intended by the composer in 1956.
As a stopgap I arranged a Candide Suite for the Israel Philharmonic which contains about fifty minutes of the
1956 score and can be performed by symphony orchestras with four soloists and a chorus. At least this way
more of the original score could be heard. But in 1983 the idea of an expanded performing version based on
the Hugh Wheeler script became a reality in response to enquiries from opera houses to make a version with
greater legitimacy available. This time Leonard Bernstein went to Los Angeles to run a conducting school
while I basically completed the task started in 1973 for Brooklyn. The expanded book could accept almost all
of the music from Candide, even some songs which had never been orchestrated before. The two act 'opera
house' version opened at the New York City Opera and was an immense success not by Broadway terms,
of course, because it only played a very limited run, rather than eight a week - but as an opera it was up there
with Carmen and Boheme in popularity in City Opera's season. Although the composer was always consulted
about this expanded version and although he was acclaimed on that opening night and although he was unstinting
in his praise for me, I knew him well enough to know that it was still not right. The success was hardly the
point. Something had gone out of Candide after 1971 and the composer wanted it back. It would be facile to
say it was guilt over allowing the Hellman book to be jettisoned that caused this malaise. I felt it too, and I am
no fan of that original book. It seemed impossible, but after working on this for a third of my life, I found myself
suggesting a hopefully final version that would redress the problems and even risk failure far the sake of
something very important.

Leonard Bernstein's music has always been about one thing: exploring the differences among people and
pleading for tolerance to allow us to live in peace and kindness. This Candide had turned into one long joke.
The heart, the tears and the faith all clearly part of Voltaire's reason for writing Candide were nowhere to
be found in the post-Lillian Hellman versions. Also the music was all out of order. The music intended to be
played in Paris had to be placed in Lisbon and the New World and the Venice music was shifted to
Constantinople. With a fresh beginning, using Hugh's two act version I was sure that the venues could be
re-arranged to come closer to the 1956 venues and then the four missing songs and a chorale - most of this
being 'serious' music could be restored, giving a proper balance to the evening. The incredulous composer
agreed to another go - but this time he had to come to Glasgow and be available during the months of
preparation. Hugh Wheeler agreed to adapt his own script, but then sadly died. Jonathan Miller, our chosen
director, suggested John Wells to help adapt the script. And we all re-read Voltaire. This new version
restores much Voltaire to the text of Wheeler, which was already closely aligned to the French original,
but now includes moments of Voltairian seriousness. Candide's lament is placed where the composer
always wanted it near the beginning of the show. (This song, which was cut from the 1956 Broadway
production, contains the 'Cunegonde theme' for which there are many subsequent variations in the score.)
The Paris music is in Paris, the Venice music takes place in Venice. 'We are Women' written for London
is restored for the first time in thirty-one years. 'Nothing More than This' written in the fifties is restored to
the score and placed where the composer intended it - a kind of Alfredo aria in which Candide throws the
gold at Cunegonde and leaves her. 'Martin's Laughing Song', written in 1971 is a major restoration since it
balances Pangloss' 'Best of all Possible Worlds'. Here Candide meets the man who thinks this is the 'Worst
of all Possible Worlds'. From the entrance into Venice to the end of the play the musical numbers flow with
almost no dialogue through the glorious finale. We have risked upsetting the success of the opera-house
version because Candide is a more complex work, one which aims higher. What better place to try this
out than Glasgow?
 

Gaynor Miles (Paquette), Nickolas Grace (Pangloss), Mark Beudert
                                                                                    (Candide) and Bonaventura Bottone (Governor) - Scottish Opera rehearsal

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