The Music Center’s Bernstein celebration continues with the Los Angeles Philharmonic mounting “Mass” for Gustavo Dudamel’s programs this week in Walt Disney Concert Hall. But this is a garden worth tending nonetheless. A little more of that bewildering mess might make for an even more organically authentic garden. Opera “Candide” makes its garden grow by tidying up and making do of a glorious mess like no other. In Bernstein, stylistic opposites and theatrical opposites may attract but not tidily. James Conlon conducts with Verdian verve.Įven so, the greatness of “Candide” is that, as Conlon also suggests in his note, is that it is no one thing. Broadway sound-designer Kai Harada adds respectfully restrained amplification. The cast features young opera singers and two Broadway (and television) veterans, Kelsey Grammer and Christine Ebersole. Mainly, though, this is a “Candide” that tries to have a little of it all without ever getting out of hand. Bush, Vladimir Putin, Tony Blair and other world leaders, all of whom parade in bathing suits.) Zambello keeps slapstick at a respectful minimum, although there is frolicking aplenty by dancers in their corsets and stockings.
(A 2006 production in Paris scandalously parodied George W. There is not much in the way of the overtly political, or any other kind of, innuendo that has tempted many another director. Zambello hues to Voltaire as well, with a period production, but one fanciful enough to allow in a bit of Las Vegas. Opera “Candide,” which Zambello directed for her Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York three years ago, relies on a 1999 Royal National Theatre production by John Caird, who rewrote the book to more closely reflect Voltaire’s novel.
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