Ruth Leon recommends…. Voltaire and Candide

Voltaire and Candide

Francois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) was better known under his nom de plume of Voltaire. He was born 330 years ago this week on Nov 21 1694.

He was an historian and philosopher of the French Enlightenment, who attacked the Catholic Church and advocated freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state.

Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and booklets. He is best remembered for his novels, notably Candide.

With Candide,Voltaire created one of the darkest – albeit hilarious – satires of world literature. Candide’s relentless optimism in the face of the inhumanity of the human race, leave you wondering whether to laugh or cry.

(The philosopher Matthew Sharpe has written about Candide) “there are few other books you could read with greater sympathy than this little gem of irony, calamity, and restrained outrage at human folly and prejudice. And none that are more cutting and entertaining.”

There have been a number of attempts to adapt Candide for the stage based on Leonard Bernstein’s glorious music. Looking at the production history of Candide, it seems that everyone in the theatre has had a go at ‘fixing’ it. What has always been wrong is the book.

Originally it was a project begun in rage in 1954 by the playwright Lillian Hellman in protest against the anti-Communist hysteria waged by the House Un-American Activities Committee. But much of what she wrote with lyricist John LaTouche and poet Richard Wilbur was excised by its director Tyrone Guthrie as being too much of a political provocation for the times.

It was then adapted by, and tinkered with, by such luminaries as Dorothy Parker, Michael Stewart, Sheldon Patinkin, Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler, Jonathan Miller and John Wells, with much interference and ‘help’ from a succession of directors and some genuine help from the music director John Mauceri, who rescued it more than once.

For what it’s worth, despite a Leonard Bernstein score of surpassing brilliance, Candide, the musical/operetta, still doesn’t work. But whatever is done to the book its score lives on. Here is the ultimate soprano audition piece, Glitter and Be Gay, performed by Broadway star Kristin Chenowith with the NY Philharmonic.

If you love this, as I do, there are several more versions of Glitter and Be Gay on YouTube, one conducted by Bernstein himself in 1989, so check them all out and find your favourite. This is mine, as Chinoweth throws herself headlong into the comedy without losing a single difficult-to-reach note but each of the others has much to offer including Barbara Cook (of whom more later) who led the originalBroadway Candide cast in 1956.