Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 13

BERNSTEIN Candide * Act I Overture Westphalia Chorale Chorus Life Is Happiness Indeed / Life Is Absolute Perfection Candide / Quartet : Maximilian, Cunegonde, Candide, Paquette The Best of All Possible Worlds Quintet : Pangloss, Cunegonde, Paquette, Candide, Maximilian Universal Good Quartet : Cunegonde, Paquette, Candide, Maximilian Oh, Happy We Duet : Candide, Cunegonde It Must Be So Candide’s First Meditation : Candide Westphalia Chorale Chorus Battle Scene Candide’s Lament Candide Dear Boy Pangloss, Chorus Auto-da-fé Candide, Pangloss, Bear-keeper, Cosmetic Merchant, Doctor, Junkman, Alchemist, Inquisitors, Judge, Chorus Candide Continues His Travels / It Must Be Me Candide’s Second Meditation : Candide Paris Waltz Scene Glitter and Be Gay Aria : Cunegonde You Were Dead, You Know Duet : Candide, Cunegonde I Am Easily Assimilated Old Lady, Cunegonde, Chorus Quartet Finale Candide, Cunegonde, Old Lady, Sea Captain, Chorus –Intermission– Act II Westphalia Chorale Chorus My Love Governor’s Serenade : Governor, Cunegonde We Are Women Polka : Cunegonde, Old Lady Alleluia Quiet Trio : Old Lady, Cunegonde, Governor Ballad of Eldorado Candide, Chorus Bon Voyage Hornpipe : Vanderdendur, Chorus Money, Money, Money Venice Gambling Scene : Croupier, Chorus What’s the Use? Ensemble : Old Lady, Ragotski, Maximilian, Crook, Chorus Nothing More Than This Candide Universal Good Chorus Make Our Garden Grow Finale : Entire Company † Ravinia debut * First performance at Ravinia Tonight’s program is performed in honor of Sandra K. Crown . LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–90) Candide Scored for two flutes and piccolo, oboe and English horn, two B-flat, one E-flat, and one bass clarinets, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets and cornet, two trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, tenor drum, bass drum, suspended cymbals, cymbals, xylophone, triangle, glockenspiel, tambourine, cowbell, maracas, gourd, bongos, steel drums, hand drums, castanets, harp, strings, narrator, vocal soloists, and chorus Candide was Leonard Bernstein’s flawed master- piece. This slow-evolving piece of musical the- ater began life as Lillian Hellman’s adaptation of a novella by 18th-century French Enlightenment writer François-Marie Arouet, known as Vol- taire. In its own time, Candide, ou l’Optimisme (Candide, or the Optimist; 1759) was considered a revolutionary, satirical piece of literature. Ber- nstein had known this picaresque novel, a type of “coming-of-age story” or Bildungsroman , since his student years. References to the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), which drew most of Europe and the New World into conflict, as well as the earthquake that ef- fectively destroyed Lisbon on All Saints’ Day (November 1) in 1755, appear throughout Can- dide . Those tragedies provided the basis for Vol- taire’s assaults on both the Church—the novella includes an auto-da-fé , or “act of faith,” ritual burning of heretics as “an infallible means of preventing the earth from quaking”—and the optimist philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz. His “theodicy” asserted that, because only God is perfect, the world he created can never achieve perfection. Therefore, a world in which evil and human suffering exist is the “best of all possible worlds.” Considerable risk accompanied these critiques, and Voltaire issued Candide anony- mously through the Swiss printer Gabriel Cra- mer. Cries of blasphemy and sedition resulted in immediate bans on the novella. Nonetheless, Candide quickly gained popularity throughout Europe, appearing in 20 different editions with- in its first year of publication. Leonard Bernstein (1956; photo: Library of Congress) AUGUST 26 – SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 95