Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 13

In Hellman’s literary imagination, Candide of- fered an unflattering allegory for the anti-Com- munist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Com- mittee (HUAC), a nine-member investigative body established on May 26, 1938. Official pro- ceedings against a group of alleged Communists within the Hollywood film industry opened in October 1947. When these writers and direc- tors—the Hollywood Ten—refused to testify before the HUAC, they were found in contempt of Congress on November 24, 1947, and placed on the Hollywood blacklist the following day. The “Red Scare” swept up more artists with the publication of the article “Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television” in the conservative journal Coun- terattack on June 22, 1950, which implicated 151 professional entertainers and broadcast journal- ists, among them Lillian Hellman, composer/ librettist Marc Blitzstein, lyricist John Latouche, composer/conductor Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein. The McCarthyist crusades affected Hellman more directly when the HUAC summoned her to explain a visit to the Soviet Union, alleged Communist activities, and her romantic rela- tionship with Dashiell Hammett, a suspected Communist who wrote private-eye novels and created the character of Sam Spade. In an open letter to committee chairman John S. Wood on May 19, 1952, Hellman agreed to waive her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in discussing her own political opinions and activ- ities, but she refused to speak about or identify other individuals. “I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form … to hurt innocent peo- ple whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my con- science to fit this year’s fashions.” Notwithstanding the incendiary political sit- uation, Bernstein remained receptive to a col- laboration with Hellman. “I know nothing about working with Lillian H.,” he wrote to his personal assistant and former piano teach- er Helen Coates on November 14, 1951, “but I would of course love to.” The following summer, Bernstein contemplated a musical based on the life of María Eva (“Evita”) Duarte de Perón, the wife of the populist president of Argentina, Juan Perón. A champion of worker’s rights and wom- en’s suffrage, Evita had died of cervical cancer at the age of 33 on July 26, 1952. Hellman was Bern- stein’s first choice as librettist, though Blitzstein expressed reservations about her suitability to the task. The Evita project never progressed be- yond concept. More than a year later, in the fall of 1953, Hell- man offered another idea: “This time I think I have it. I don’t know, but maybe Voltaire’s Can- dide . I think I could make a really wonderful combination of opera—prose—songs.” By that time, Bernstein was entangled in negotiations with the US State Department, which had de- nied his passport renewal application, presum- ably based on suspicion of Communist activity. The composer/conductor provided an 11-page sworn affidavit summarizing his life, career, and organizational affiliations. “I wish to conclude this affidavit by repeating in the most solemn way the affirmation of loyalty to the United States and opposition to Soviet Communism which I expressed [in 1949].” Following the in- tervention of a well-placed lawyer, Jim McIn- erney (“an old Commie chaser,” as Bernstein described him), the State Department renewed the passport. Bernstein left the country almost immediately with his family for several months in Brazil, Israel, and Europe. After returning to the US in January 1954, he announced his inter- est in “having a fling” with Candide . Bernstein decided to take a sabbatical from Tan- glewood during the summer of 1954 in order to work on compositional projects. Settling into a rental house on Martha’s Vineyard, he reported that “my life is all Lillian Hellman and Candide and the violin concerto [ Serenade (after Pla- to’s ‘Symposium’) ] for Isaac Stern.” The “comic operetta” after Voltaire experienced a difficult gestation while Hellman wrote at her typically slow pace. After considering Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Ira Gershwin as possible lyr- icists, they settled on John Latouche, though he failed to meet their expectations, as Bernstein recounted to his friends Barbara and Philip Marcuse on November 26: “We have had big lyricist trouble in Candide , and have only now, this minute (two weeks ago, that is) made a final and utter break with Mr. Latouche.” They turned next to 33-year-old Richard Wilbur, “a marvel- ous young poet who has never written a lyric in his life, and is already doing wonders,” Bernstein informed violinist and composer David Dia- mond on May 25, 1956. Not long after complet- ing Candide , Wilbur won his first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1957 for Things of This World . Much time had been lost, but Bernstein experi- enced his own sense of optimism. “I now have hope for Candide , for the first time in ages,” he wrote excitedly to Diamond. After a tryout at Boston’s Colonial Theater, Candide opened on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on December 1, 1956. At the time of the premiere, Bernstein celebrated the work’s great contempo- rary relevance while downplaying any political references. “The matters with which [Voltaire’s Candide ] is concerned are as valid for us as for any—and sometimes I think they are especially valid for us in America,” he explained two weeks before the premiere in an article entitled “Col- loquy in Boston” in the New York Times (No- vember 18, 1956). “Puritanical snobbery, phony moralism, inquisitorial attacks on the individu- al, brave-new-world optimism, essential supe- riority—aren’t these all charges leveled against American society by our best thinkers?” Critics recognized Candide ’s conceptual bril- liance, but audiences found the production too erudite and confusing. The show ran for a disap- pointing 73 performances. Over the subsequent three decades, there were numerous revivals and revisions, frequently in direct collaboration with François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire Lillian Hellman (1935; photo: Hal Phyfe) Original production of Candide (1956) RAVINIA MAGAZINE | AUGUST 26 – SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 96