Candide immediately ransomed the Baron and Pangloss. The latter flung himself at the feet of his deliverer, and bathed him with his tears. The former thanked him with a gracious nod, and promised to return the money at the first opportunity. “But is it possible?” said he, “that my sister is in Turkey?” “Nothing is more possible,” answered Cacambo, “since she is the dishwasher in the house of a Transylvanian prince.” Candide sent for two Jews, and sold more diamonds to them. And then he set out with his companions in another galley, to free Miss Cunégonde from slavery.
INSPIRED BY CANDIDE
George Bernard Shaw’s Candida
The name Candide has come to mean a naive person who is optimistic to the point of stupidity. However, the title character of George Bernard Shaw’s play Candida (1893) is not at all naive. Shaw speaks of Candida in his stage directions: “Her ways are those of a woman who has found that she can always manage people by engaging their affection, and who does so frankly and instinctively without the smallest scruple. So far, she is like any other pretty woman who is just clever enough to make the most of her sexual attractions for trivially selfish ends: but Candida’s serene brow, courageous eyes, and well set mouth and chin signify largeness of mind and dignity of character to ennoble her cunning in the affections.”
At Candida ’s center is a love triangle: Candida; her husband, Morell ; and Eugene Marchbanks, a poet of eighteen who plays the role of the naïf. Marchbanks’s metaphysical poetry echoes the optimistic theories of Leibniz and Pope that Voltaire had lambasted. Shaw, whose best of all possible worlds was no doubt a socialist one, constructed a drama every bit as subversive and critical of human folly as Voltaire’s Candide . But by giving Candida the twin gifts of reason and power, Shaw located wisdom in the feminine.
Leonard Bernstein’s Candide
The evolution of the comic operetta Candide is a story of prolonged adaptation and revision. Leonard Bernstein began work on a musical based on Voltaire’s Candide in 1954, with help from playwright Lillian Hellman and eventual poet laureate Richard Wilbur. Before the work’s 1956 premiere, Bernstein said of Hellman’s book: “She has taken Voltaire and done much more than adapt him: she has added, deleted, rewritten, replotted, composed brand new sequences, provided a real ending, and, I feel, made it infinitely more significant for our country and our time.” To Wilbur’s verses were added lyrics by John La Touche, Dorothy Parker, and Bernstein himself. Bernstein composed the score, arguably one of the most complex in musical theater, around the same time that he wrote the bold and sumptuous West Side Story (1957). When it opened in Boston and had a relatively short run on Broadway (1956-1957), the two-act Candide was not considered a success; rather than comic, the libretto struck audiences as angry in its targeting of McCarthyism as the modern corollary of the Inquisition.
In 1959, the bicentennial of the publication of Voltaire’s Candide , Bernstein’s musical opened in London with some new songs. This production did not succeed either, nor did those based on subsequent revisions in 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1971. In 1973 Hellman’s book was abandoned completely in favor of a new one by Hugh Wheeler, and Steven Sondheim contributed new lyrics. Director Harold Prince took on the task of taming Bernstein’s score, squeezing it into one act and paring down the orchestra to thirteen members. This version, executed without significant input from Bernstein, was the first to have any success. However, though rollickingly funny from curtain to curtain, the 1973 version had lost much of the philosophy of the original.
The director of the Scottish Opera, John Mauceri, began work on his version of the musical in 1982. Mauceri expanded the 1973 version back into two acts and restored nearly all of Bernstein’s music. Five
INSPIRED BY CANDIDE
George Bernard Shaw’s Candida
The name Candide has come to mean a naive person who is optimistic to the point of stupidity. However, the title character of George Bernard Shaw’s play Candida (1893) is not at all naive. Shaw speaks of Candida in his stage directions: “Her ways are those of a woman who has found that she can always manage people by engaging their affection, and who does so frankly and instinctively without the smallest scruple. So far, she is like any other pretty woman who is just clever enough to make the most of her sexual attractions for trivially selfish ends: but Candida’s serene brow, courageous eyes, and well set mouth and chin signify largeness of mind and dignity of character to ennoble her cunning in the affections.”
At Candida ’s center is a love triangle: Candida; her husband, Morell ; and Eugene Marchbanks, a poet of eighteen who plays the role of the naïf. Marchbanks’s metaphysical poetry echoes the optimistic theories of Leibniz and Pope that Voltaire had lambasted. Shaw, whose best of all possible worlds was no doubt a socialist one, constructed a drama every bit as subversive and critical of human folly as Voltaire’s Candide . But by giving Candida the twin gifts of reason and power, Shaw located wisdom in the feminine.
Leonard Bernstein’s Candide
The evolution of the comic operetta Candide is a story of prolonged adaptation and revision. Leonard Bernstein began work on a musical based on Voltaire’s Candide in 1954, with help from playwright Lillian Hellman and eventual poet laureate Richard Wilbur. Before the work’s 1956 premiere, Bernstein said of Hellman’s book: “She has taken Voltaire and done much more than adapt him: she has added, deleted, rewritten, replotted, composed brand new sequences, provided a real ending, and, I feel, made it infinitely more significant for our country and our time.” To Wilbur’s verses were added lyrics by John La Touche, Dorothy Parker, and Bernstein himself. Bernstein composed the score, arguably one of the most complex in musical theater, around the same time that he wrote the bold and sumptuous West Side Story (1957). When it opened in Boston and had a relatively short run on Broadway (1956-1957), the two-act Candide was not considered a success; rather than comic, the libretto struck audiences as angry in its targeting of McCarthyism as the modern corollary of the Inquisition.
In 1959, the bicentennial of the publication of Voltaire’s Candide , Bernstein’s musical opened in London with some new songs. This production did not succeed either, nor did those based on subsequent revisions in 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1971. In 1973 Hellman’s book was abandoned completely in favor of a new one by Hugh Wheeler, and Steven Sondheim contributed new lyrics. Director Harold Prince took on the task of taming Bernstein’s score, squeezing it into one act and paring down the orchestra to thirteen members. This version, executed without significant input from Bernstein, was the first to have any success. However, though rollickingly funny from curtain to curtain, the 1973 version had lost much of the philosophy of the original.
The director of the Scottish Opera, John Mauceri, began work on his version of the musical in 1982. Mauceri expanded the 1973 version back into two acts and restored nearly all of Bernstein’s music. Five
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