LAST WORD REVIEW: Candide @ New York City Opera

Sunday afternoon, The New York City Opera unofficially bid farewell to its landmark Harold Prince production of the invaluable Leonard Bernstein operetta, Candide. It took Mr. Prince’s production, begun at the Chelsea Theater in 1973 and later brought to the New York City Opera by Beverly Sills in 1982 (with Stephen Sondheim brought in to revamp some of the lyrics), in what now stands as Prince’s “opera house” version, to establish broad stage success for Candide, whose initial staging in 1956 had been doomed to failure for what seems to be a lack of collaborative focus. And though the pointed Prince production is beloved by many City Opera patrons (yesterday marked its 79th performance at the State Theater), it seems unlikely that this fanciful period production will be appealing to the incoming General Director designate, Gerard Mortier.

Indeed, Prince’s Candide brings Voltaire’s wanderlust satire and Bernstein (& Co.’s) music-theater vision into unison focus. He sets the work within the mise-en-scene of an eighteenth century carnival freak show. An antique marquis atop the proscenium announces, “Dr. Voltaire’s Freaks & Wonders.” Eventually, and surprisingly, the heart of the musical stands out from the aesthetic clutter (even through some of Judith Dolan’s more obnoxious costume pieces). But with all its attempts to level the playing field between camp and satire, opera and musical comedy, this Candide loses its potency to transcend the surface of comedy and hit home the message that the best of all possible worlds is the one we create for ourselves out of hard work, love, and a mature attitude to the world that constantly tries our belief in good.

Because through all the surface fluff, Candide is actually quite a serious show. It targets religious corruption–a razor sharp arrow hits the Catholic church’s crippling and inexcusable problem of sexual abuse, and could not have been more apropos of The Pope’s final day visiting our fair metropolis–and various other pitfalls of civilized life, like greed, war, domestic squabble and infidelity. It ends up being a very earnest work that constantly tears down that fantasy of a utopia beyond our troubles, that nagging and patient phantasm that we revert to whenever the going gets tough and we begin to believe the world would be a better place either A.) without everyone else in it, or B.) without one’s self in it.

Daniel Reichard (from Jersey Boys) is placable as the love-lost and disillusioned eponymous character. He projects a fresh quality of innocence while still being able to pull off some of Candide’s more tongue-in-cheek foibles. His voice is sweet yet woody. Even though it lacks a kind of ping that more operatic tenor voices will have, his vocal performance is otherwise appealing.

As Cunegonde, the innocently aristocratic object of Candide’s affection, who befalls almost as many unseemly fates as the Old Lady (played sufficiently by Judith Blazer), Lauren Worsham masters the comic aspects of her character, but unfortunately doesn’t bring the opulence needed to achieve the rather daunting vocal passages, particularly in the powerhouse aria, “Glitter and Be Gay,” where she glosses over some of the trickier parts and doesn’t sustain the higher notes the way a more confident–and perhaps more skilled–singer might. Instead of drawing out the vamp, she daintily tiptoes through the motions of what is actually one of the more daringly playful moments in coloratura repertoire. Some curious vowel choices also hindered listening.

Veteran of both silver and small screens, Richard Kind stood out in a commanding performance as Dr. Pangloss (and about half a dozen other characters), whose own pessimism belies the forcefully optimistic theories he uses to send his students hurtling toward an unforeseeable future or war, rape, capital punishment, swindling and starvation. Kind is able to straddle the line between benevolent guide and mischievous foil, mixing in mugging and bawdiness with madcap virtuosity.

Kyle Pfortmiller is charming as Maximilian, the vain and pouty young Arian and Cunegonde’s brother who winds up the boy toy of a rogue pirate and Catholic Bishop.

The orchestra was rhythmically loose at the beginning and struggled to find a balance between the percussion and brass and the other sections of the orchestra. But, under the direction of George Manahan, it wasn’t too long into the first act that they really gelled and started playing with ease and exactitude.

Candide has the capacity to serve as a wake up call to the troublesome mindset too prevalent in our culture, the one that, by way of religion or willful ignorance, oversimplifies the human condition and resists coming into a mature relationship with the more challenging contradictions of the human world. But in Prince’s production, you never quite get that erosion of innocence necessary to make the final moments truly resonant and eye-opening. So when we arrive at “Make Our Garden Grow,” the enduring and magnificent ode to being responsible for one’s own destiny–for better or for worse–we’re still not sure if any of the characters are actually ready to take that plunge. A change of voice is certainly necessary here. Otherwise, the anthem comes across as merely one more sad attempt to trick ourselves into believing that simply by wishing the world to change around us, it will.

It won’t.