The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta. Michael White

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       Principal Characters

      Candide, a Westphalian youth

      Cunegonde, his beloved

      Dr Pangloss, Candide’s tutor

      Maximilian, Cunegonde’s brother

      Paquette, Cunegonde’s maid

      Old Lady

      Note: Candide was a critical failure when it was first produced in 1956 and there have been several revised versions. The most notable of these was the 1973 version, with a new libretto by Hugh Wheeler. New scenes were introduced, some drawn from Voltaire’s novel, others invented. A 1989 concert version, conducted by Bernstein and performed in London, contains elements from various earlier revisions and is the last form of the work to which the composer gave his approval.

       Synopsis of the Plot

      The details of the plot vary considerably between the different versions, but in all cases the story concerns the young Candide, who has been taught by Dr Pangloss that ‘everything happens for the best in the best of all possible worlds’. Armed with this unshakeable optimism, Candide sets out on his travels and experiences an endless series of disasters and difficulties, including war, rape, the apparent loss of Cunegonde, betrayal and the disappearance of Dr Pangloss at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. Candide then leaves Europe in the company of an Old Lady and explores the New World and Eldorado. On his way back the intrepid traveller survives a shipwreck and returns, at last, to his Westphalian home. Here Candide acknowledges his disillusionment with Dr Pangloss’s theories and decides that, even though the world may be full of evil, we must all try to build our own lives on good, honest principles.

       Music and Background

      The overture to Candide could almost have been Bernstein’s signature tune – brilliant, up-tempo, highly charged – and it opens a piece whose hybrid nature as an up-market, philosophical, operatic operetta always caused problems in casting, staging and selling it to the public. Both words and music underwent extensive revisions over thirty years, with a conveyor belt of collaborating librettists. But the basic idea of high-spirited parody numbers survived in what amounts to an exhilarating mass-rape of European music history, buoyant with catchy, quick-change rhythms. The role of Cunegonde demands a soprano with the coloratura (i.e. embellishing) prowess of a prima donna assoluta; and the score is alive with character parts which are a gift to serious and maybe superannuated opera stars who want to let whatever is left of their hair down.

       Highlights

      Cunegonde’s exquisitely decorative jewel song ‘Glitter and be gay’ invariably stops the show, although the demands it makes of the singer have no doubt on many an occasion stopped the show ever happening. Candide’s two Act I ‘Meditations’ supply pathos. The big choral finale, ‘Make our garden grow’, is superior Hollywood and deeply moving.

      Did You Know?

      Recommended Recording

      June Andersen, Jerry Hadley, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, London Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Bernstein. DG 429 734-2. The legacy of two spectacular concert performances at the Barbican in 1989, with contributions from the Broadway veteran Adolph Green and a lot of chutzpah.

A Quiet Place

       FORM: Opera in one act; in English

       COMPOSER: Leonard Bernstein (1918–90)

       LIBRETTO: Stephen Wadsworth

       FIRST PERFORMANCE: Milan, 17 June 1983

       Principal Characters

      Sam, the father

Baritone

      Sam Junior, his son

Baritone

      Dede, Sam’s daughter

Soprano

      François, Dede’s husband

Tenor

       Synopsis of the Plot

      Setting: Contemporary America

      The funeral of Sam’s wife, Dinah, killed in a car crash, brings together the estranged members of her family: Sam Junior, his sister and her husband, François, who at one time was Sam Junior’s lover. Underlying tensions quickly surface and Junior’s mental instability becomes apparent. In the evening the four recall the history of their relationships with each other and with their dead mother. The next morning, after breakfast and games in the garden (the ‘quiet place’), they find that their hostility has given way to reconciliation.

       Music and Background

      The operatic equivalent of a Russian doll, A Quiet Place is actually one piece inside another: most of the middle act is the self-contained Trouble in Tahiti written thirty years earlier, and its music sounds markedly different to what comes before and after. The Tahiti sections are in lyrical, near-Broadway style, with sardonic contributions from a 1950s close-harmony trio who hymn the idealised joys of suburban life while the suburban characters, Dinah and Sam, demonstrate the bleak realities. The surrounding sections are musically more complex, less direct and less memorable – although Bernstein’s sense of melody is always there, not far below the surface.

       Highlights

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