15 hours Ago By Operawire Staff
(Photo credit: Carlita Sari)Lillian Hellman, who suggested the idea of the musical “Candide” to the great American composer Leonard Bernstein, once described Voltaire’s original 1759 novel on which the show is based as “the greatest piece of slapdash ever written.”The novel certainly packs a breathless pace as it follows its eponymous hero on an adversity-filled journey around the world that truly tests his mentor Dr Pangloss’s belief that “[T]his is the best of all possible worlds.” And you couldn’t help thinking ironically as this Opera Australia incarnation approached its finale, “Best of all possible worlds? Yeah, right?”Although the original musical went through many incarnations becoming more and more operatic, and ultimately contains more of the work of others such as Richard Wilbur and John Wheeler than Hellman’s original contribution, Hellmann’s pronouncement could be taken as the greatest piece of advice for any potential director of this work.
And certainly Melbourne-based director Dean Bryant’s interpretation, a 2024 production by Victorian Opera restaged this year by Opera Australia in the Sydney Opera House, lived up to such a characterization in its hurly-burly energy.This production had the kind of rough theatrical vigor you might expect from a Brechtian panorama of argument. What we had on stage was a ragtag troupe of traveling players traversing the world in a caravan that makes do, in theatrical shorthand, for a castle in Westphalia that is the jumping-off point for a story that takes in Paris and Buenos Aires and many other destinations.
There was something alfresco and improvisatory about the show’s wide-ranging energy.Opera Australia’s program booklet noted that designer Dann Barber “channels lavish 18th-century fashions in a riot of crinolines, frills and powdered wigs, but reveals society’s tawdry underbelly by cunning use of grungy garbage bags, and contemporary footwear.” The universe this “Candide” explores (thereby putting Pangloss’s dictum to the test against the gritty reality of the whole wide world), seems almost Hogarthian.
By now there is a growing body of musical theater work that fits comfortably between the definitions of opera and musical. The pace of this production seemed more like straight theater – and several of the cast members have musical theater rather than opera backgrounds. Eddie Perfect who played Candide’s mentor Dr Pangloss has also performed in other works that could be considered ‘in-between’ – Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” and Brecht/Weill’s “Threepenny Opera.
” Other members of the cast such as New Zealand-born bass Eddie Muliaumaseali’i (Cacambo) and mezzo-soprano Dominica Matthews (Old Lady) have sung Wagner.Perfect was an exemplary intermediary between the two musical worlds, his broadening Australian accent even bridging the gulf between European operetta and Sydney summer entertainment. Arguably, the more successful (more impactful) performances offered more than the vocal characterization that might suffice for opera, notwithstanding the marvelous poignancy of Lyndon Watts’ more soulful numbers as Candide: ‘It Must Be So’ (Candide’s Meditation) and the ‘Lament’ after Cunegonde, Candide’s sweetheart, has seemingly been bayoneted to death.
And notwithstanding the fact that some of the more operatic numbers – Annie Aitken’s ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ (the revived heroine Cunegonde’s coloratura spoof) and ‘I Am Easily Assimilated’ sung by Dominica Matthews as The Old Lady were the applause-magnets you might expect them to be.In Opera Australia’s previous production this season, “The Barber of Seville”, the company provided surtitles in Chinese and English. How much more appropriate might this have been here when the text is so involved and ingenious? It’s not just the speed at which performers have to deliver some of these lines that’s at issue, but cultural references that even a sharp-eared audience-member has to be quick to catch, eg.
“’Twas Snake that tempted Mother Eve. Because of Snake we now believe /That though depraved / We can be saved / From hellfire and damnation.”Sydney conductor Brett Weymark did an excellent job shepherding this work through its breakneck pace while honoring, as has been noted, those moments that are lyrical and poignant, and accounting for the richness of detail that one would expect from Bernstein the conductor-master of the classical repertoire and Hershy Kay, his unerring orchestrator.
But amplification is one area where the modern musical is still distinct from opera (hard to argue against it once you have acknowledged the musical form’s stronger reliance on the cleverness and even complexity of its words). Opera Australia managed amplification excellently last year in “Watershed”, Joe Twist’s musical theater piece about the murder of Adelaide academic Dr. George Duncan.
But there seemed to be some balances in “Candide” which sat at acoustic odds with what you might expect. Admittedly, this was most noticeable in the overture where, for example, the brass outburst of a phrase that occurs later in the battle scene actually seemed to sit under the volume of instruments that normally have lower dynamic power. But these were momentary anomalies.
Bars later, we could enjoy the radiant bloom with which the strings foreshadow the ‘Oh, Happy We’ duet.After all the travail and setbacks of the plot, “Candide” comes to a philosophical conclusion in the final chorus. As a standalone philosophy, the idea that Candide and Cunegonde as newlyweds will “do the best we can” is very touching, and, admittedly, ‘Make Our Garden Grow’ fulfils the promise of the earlier ‘Oh, Happy We’ duet: “We’ll build a modest little farm.
” Humility is the key to the best of all possible worlds?The production gave us a moving and convincing conclusion here as the players’ caravan moved offstage and Bryant’s cast planted flowers. The Opera Australia Chorus prepared by Paul Fitzsimon, which had excelled as commentators throughout the proceedings, here provided heft behind the whole ensemble as the entire cast sang a capella: “We’re neither pure nor wise nor good; We’ll do the best we know. We’ll build our house, and chop our wood, And make our garden grow.
” Weymark’s cut-off just before the stirring repeat of the final clause spoke to the neatness with which he had punctuated this prolific score all night.The post Opera Australia2025 Review: Candide appeared first on OperaWire..
