Arts & Manners: Kennedy Candide

That Leonard Bernstein’s Candide should have been one of the first attractions in the Opera House of the Kennedy Center was predictable and reasonable: Bernstein had composed his controversial, undeniably chic, eclectic “Mass” for the Center; Bernstein is a major American popular composer; and Candide is, for everyone interested in the American musical theater, the lost masterpiece, its reputation enhanced by fifteen years of fantasizing, on the part of people who own the record, as to what the short-lived original Broadway production must have looked like. So Candide came to the Kennedy Center.

Musically the production came up to memories of the album, though barely. Mary Costa’s Cunegonde ducked some challenges of the big pastiche aria “Glitter and Be Gay” and too often substituted coquetry for voice. Frank Porretta’s Candide and William Lewis’ Governor (et alia) were fine. Rae Allan’s Duenna was laden with excess consonants that impeded any clear understanding of what she was saying about two-thirds of the time. The chorus, conducting and acoustics were acceptable. A feast for the ear.

RC

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Richmond Crinkley

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That Leonard Bernstein’s Candide should have been one of the first attractions in the Opera House of the Kennedy Center was predictable and reasonable: Bernstein had composed his controversial, undeniably chic, eclectic “Mass” for the Center; Bernstein is a major American popular composer; and Candide is, for everyone interested in the American musical theater, the lost masterpiece, its reputation enhanced by fifteen years of fantasizing, on the part of people who own the record, as to what the short-lived original Broadway production must have looked like. So Candide came to the Kennedy Center.

Musically the production came up to memories of the album, though barely. Mary Costa’s Cunegonde ducked some challenges of the big pastiche aria “Glitter and Be Gay” and too often substituted coquetry for voice. Frank Porretta’s Candide and William Lewis’ Governor (et alia) were fine. Rae Allan’s Duenna was laden with excess consonants that impeded any clear understanding of what she was saying about two-thirds of the time. The chorus, conducting and acoustics were acceptable. A feast for the ear.