Candide Bernstein
The New York City Opera closed its doors after 70 years in 2013, but began reviving last year with a mixed bag of productions ranging from Puccini to Daniel Catán – in other words, they’ve been all over the place. With this production of Candide, however, there’s a real sense of a company returning to form and feeling at home
USA
NEW YORK CITY OPERA
Music ****
Staging ****
Review by Robert Levine Photography by Sarah Shatz
Now based at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall, the company staged Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, one of their great past successes. The production is by the 88-year-old Hal Prince, who oversaw (with Stephen Sondheim) both the successful 1973 Broadway revival of what was a flop in 1956, as well as the NYCO’s 1982 ‘opera house’ version. For that version, which is almost untouched here, Hugh Wheeler wrote the book and Bernstein, Richard Wilbur, Sondheim and John LaTouche wrote the lyrics. The work remains a somewhat confusing fusion of opera and Broadway, but it is, nevertheless, a musical masterpiece.