
By Robert Croan
This month, the South Florida Symphony Orchestra attempted one of its most ambitious projects to date — a semi-staged concert version of Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 operetta Candide — and came through with flying colors.
The local performances (seen in Broward Center’s Au-Rene Theater on Jan. 16) were staged with endless creativity by Dan Wallace Miller, using minimal sets (by Michael Miles) and colorful costumes — production elements overseen by former Florida Grand Opera director Susan T. Danis. The complex musical realization, with a first-rate cast led by SFSO music director Sebrina Maria Alfonso, was no less praiseworthy.
As a teenager, I had the good fortune to see the original Broadway production, labeled at the time an operetta. It was a financial failure, closing after a meager 73 performances. The term operetta was in itself a kiss of death for a Broadway show, while the libretto, based on Voltaire’s 1759 novel satirizing the unrealistic optimism projected by Enlightenment-era philosophy, was criticized for being too serious. Few observers thought that the work would have what is referred to in theater jargon as “legs.”
Since that time, Bernstein and his several librettists (including among others, Richard Wilbur, Lillian Hellman and Stephen Sondheim) put the work through innumerable revisions. There are Broadway versions, opera versions, concert versions for symphony orchestras and just about everything in between. Bernstein completed a “final revised version” a year before his death in 1990, but most arrangements performed today have been tweaked posthumously in one way or another. There had been five productions during the composer’s lifetime; Wikipedia lists 14 up to 2018, and there have been several more since then.
I’ve always loved this work, but felt that with the exception of one or two later insertions, the terse and sassy original score was the best, and that Hellman’s McCarthy-era political references (later eliminated) retain an eerie relevance today. You can check out the original 1956 cast recording on YouTube or elsewhere. The version used here, adapted by Lonny Price for the New York Philharmonic in 2004, works very well, however, in a concert hall setting.

With the orchestra upstage of the singers and the action, conductor Alfonso opened with a sparkling rendition of the Overture, which has become a concert favorite on its own. Thereafter, she maintained consistent control of her forces, even with her back to the vocalists, keeping the soloists and vocal ensemble (excellently prepared by Giselle Elgarresta Rios) remarkably in sync, even through some frenetic crowd action and fight sequences.
Voltaire’s novel, along with its musical incarnation, centers on the naïve, always optimistic Candide, whose teacher Dr. Pangloss (Voltaire’s fictional self-portrait) has taught him to believe that this is “the best of all possible worlds.” David Walton came off a little mature for the youthful version of the character in Act 1, but sang throughout with a sharp-toned, open tenor that projected his words clearly. He transitioned to the experienced Candide with pathos and sincerity in his serious soliloquies.
Candide is the illegitimate nephew of a rich baron, whose daughter, Cunegonde, is the object of his affection. Not allowed to marry each other, the couple take different paths, Cunegonde ostensibly forced to relinquish her virtue for the high life in Paris and Rome. For this role, originally taken by the young Barbara Cook, Bernstein wrote one of his masterpiece solo numbers: “Glitter and Be Gay,” a unique and ingenious take-off on operatic coloratura arias. Think of Mozart’s Queen of the Night attacking the Mad Scene from Donizetti’s Lucia.
Chelsea Lehnea embodied the character of the not-so-reluctant courtesan while negotiating everyone one of the roulades and stratospheric vocal forays with seeming ease and a sense of fun in the process. Her “Glitter” aria literally stopped the show (with applause and shouts of “Brava”), the soprano subsequently demonstrating feats of physical and sonic athleticism that carried a special sort of personal magnetism.
If Cunegonde was modeled on the diva of all divas, the role of The Old Lady, multi-ravished and missing one buttock, is the prototype of the Gilbert and Sullivan contralto, Little Buttercup and Katisha on steroids. The deep tones and seasoned deep comic proficiencies of Alissa Anderson filled the bill to a T, making her solo turn, “I am Easily Assimilated,” a second highlight of the evening.

The catalyst of all the action is the multiple part of Narrator, Dr. Pangloss (Candide’s teacher) and Voltaire himself, created for an actor (Max Adrian) who did not have classical vocal training. The present protagonist, Jason Zacher, had real vocal training, a resonant baritone voice, acting skills to burn, and most important, an alluring persona that dominated the stage every moment he was on.
Lisa Marie Rogali’s sexy good looks and lush mezzo tones made her a center of attention when the glamorous Paquette was on stage, while the large cast was filled out competently by supporting singing-actors Lovell Rose, Ben Ross and Max Jacob Zander.