Useful Spice in Music and Vision 21 January

Useful Spice
GIUSEPPE PENNISI discovers,
via Bernstein's 'Candide', why we don't live in
'the best of all possible worlds'

Lenny Bernstein loved Rome, where he has been honorary chairman of the National Santa Cecilia Academy from 1983 until 1990. Yet his masterpiece for the opera theatre, Candide, only reached the stage of Teatro dell'Opera on 18 January 2012, a much deserved posthumous homage to one of the most important composers and conductors of the twentieth century. Candide had already been seen and heard in Rome. I remember a magnificent concert performance some fifteen years ago at the National Santa Cecilia Academy with Jeffrey Tate in the pit and June Anderson in the key-role of Cunegonde. Also in the Summer 2003, as a part of a European tour, Opera Pacific of Southern California staged three performances of a low cost production in the smaller but elegant Teatro Argentina (where Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia had its premiere in February 1816): the orchestra was fine but the singers could not match the requirements of this complex score, full of irony against the most frequent operatic conventions.

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
The Teatro dell'Opera is a large late nineteenth century eighteen hundred seat theatre with four rows of boxes, a balcony and an upper tier; it was remodeled in the thirties and in the fifties. Its acoustics are far from perfect. It is, no doubt, a much larger house than the Boston theatre where Candide was previewed and Broadway Chelsea Theatre where it had its first run of performances. However, it is fit for real opera singers, a proper orchestra, an important chorus and an elaborate stage set. Hence to graduate Candide from 'a comic operetta in two acts' (as its final 1956 version was named) to a real opera as, in fact, it is.

Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Candide follows Voltaire's novel quite closely: a satire against enlightenment philosophers who profess that ours is the best of all possible worlds. However, it is also fully immersed in the politics of America of the late fifties; thus, a satire against MacCarthyism, the strong anti-communism movement that dominated Capitol Hill for several years and penalized any artistic and intellectual thought with socialist, liberal and in any case 'un-American' views. The authors of the libretto are, in addition to Bernstein himself, a team of such intellectuals: Joseph La Touche, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Stephen Sondheim and Richard Wilbur. Of course, with such a highly political left-of-center group, Candide had difficulties being accepted in major theatres when it was written and composed. Only in 1974 did it reach an important Broadway stage for as many as seven hundred and forty performances, but without voices with true operatic pitch. We owe to Beverly Sills and Julius Rudel the discovery of Candide as a twentieth century opera masterpiece; in 1982 Candide entered the repertory of New York City Opera in a production which toured the US -- I saw it in the Washington DC Kennedy Center Opera House, a much larger theatre (with two thousand six hundred seats) than the Rome Teatro dell'Opera. Now the un-American Activities Committee and Joseph MacCarthy are a distant memory only to people over sxity. Nonetheless, Candide is still an abrasive satire against undue optimism and arrogance of power. Also, it is a demonstration that we are not in the best of all possible worlds and that, in Voltaire's own words, we must practice 'intolerance against all intolerants'.

Michael Spyres as Candide, Jessica Pratt as Cunegonde and members of the chorus in Bernstein's 'Candide' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
Candide is a singspiel like Mozart's Die Zauberflöte -- indeed it requires for the role of Cunegonde a coloratura soprano with the same vocal agility as the Queen of the Night. Thus, it alternates musical numbers with spoken dialogues; in addition, its English text is full of American idioms, often with sexual overtones, which can easily get lost in translation. The Rome production (leased from a 2007 production of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples) follows, by and large, the ingenious idea of musicologist Visco von Bülow (more commonly known by his nickname Loriot) for the German audience: the spoken parts are replaced by a narrator (Voltaire himself) to tie together the various episodes of this complicated plot. The Loriot treatment has been played in thirty German opera houses under the baton of David Stahl and recorded by the Capriccio company with an all-star cast, but it is often performed in a German translation. The present version is sung in American English (keeping all the original innuendos), but the part of Voltaire, the narrator, is taken by Adriana Asti, a well known actress on the Italian and French scene.

Adriana Asti as Voltaire in Bernstein's 'Candide' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Luciano Romano. Click on the image for higher resolution
The staging was quite witty: Lorenzo Mariani (director), Nicola Rubertelly (stage sets), Giusi Giustino (costumes), Seán Curen (choreography), Franco Ferrari (lighting), and Fabio Massimo and Luca Attili (films and computerized projections) place the action in a late 1950s television studio where something in between a telenovela and a talk show is being recorded. The action is swift; the images (especially the black-and-white vintage newsreels) are engrossing. All the singers are effective actors. It deserves a DVD and, even better, a tour in Italy and abroad.

Adriana Asti as Voltaire, Derek Welton as Pangloss and Michael Spyres in the title role of Bernstein's 'Candide' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
The British conductor Wayne Marshall kept a good balance between pit and a stage crowded with as many as eighteen soloists (in twenty seven different roles), a very active chorus, dancers and mimes. Nonetheless, his tempi were slower than those of Jeffrey Tate, David Stahl and Julius Rudel. On 18 January, he seemed to lack a bit of allegro con brio, a useful spice for such a satire.

Adriana Asti as Voltaire in Bernstein's 'Candide' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Luciano Romano. Click on the image for higher resolution
Of the many singers, let's focus only on the principals. The American mid-Western Michael Spyres (as Candide) is a quite good lyric tenor with a powerful voice and the right texture for the role; he sang his cavatina 'My world is dust now', his duets with Cunegonde and the Make our garden grow finale all very well. The Australian Jessica Pratt (as Cunegonde) excelled in Glitter and be gay, an extremely difficult 'coloratura aria' echoing those of Mozart, Bellini and Donizetti operas. They were just enthralling together, in their duet United after so much pain. The Australian baritone Derek Welton had three roles: a major one -- the philosopher Pangloss -- and two minor roles as Martin and Cacambo. He was very good in the generally known syphilis aria ('Each Nation guards its native land') as well as in Words, words, words. The generally attractive American mezzo Jane Henschel was made up as the Old Lady, super in her aria (turning into a duet with Cunegonde: I was not born in sunny Hispania.

Michael Spyres as Candide and Jessica Pratt as Cunegonde in Bernstein's 'Candide' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
The chorus, directed by Roberto Gabbiani, deserved a special mention for acting and singing.

Bruno Taddia as Maximilian, Michael Spyres as Candide, Jessica Pratt as Cunegonde and members of the chorus in Bernstein's 'Candide' at Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. Photo © 2012 Corrado Maria Falsini. Click on the image for higher resolution
The audience enjoyed the performance but was not enthusiastic. Candide is still quite different from the standard fare they are accustomed to.
Copyright © 21 January 2012 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

LEONARD BERNSTEIN
CANDIDE
TEATRO DELL'OPERA
ROME
ITALY
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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