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of a play by 18th-century writer Voltaire, the
“father of the French Revolution.” Hellman sug-
gested Voltaire’s comic satire
Candide
as an un-
flattering allegory for the anti-Communist cru-
sade—led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the
House Un-American Activities Committee—
from which America was only recently emerg-
ing. The merciless McCarthyist crusades affect-
ed Hellman directly when she was summoned
before the committee to explain her visit to the
Soviet Union, alleged Communist activities, and
romantic relationship with Dashiel Hammett
(a suspected Communist who portrayed Sam
Spade on the radio).
Hellman proposed the production to Bernstein
in September 1950, but the busy composer/
conductor/pianist did not consent to “having
a fling” with
Candide
for four more years. This
“comic operetta” experienced a difficult gesta-
tion; while Hellman wrote at her typically slow
pace, Bernstein worked on his film score to
On
the Waterfront
and began
West Side Story
, and
the whole production went through a series of
lyricists—John La Touche, Dorothy Parker, and
finally Richard Wilbur, with adaptations by Ber-
nstein and Hellman. (Stephen Sondheim con-
tributed lyrics to later productions.)
After a tryout at Boston’s Colonial Theater,
Can-
dide
opened on Broadway at the Martin Beck
Theater on December 1, 1956. The show ran for
a disappointing 73 performances. Critics recog-
nized
Candide
’s conceptual brilliance, but au-
diences found the production too erudite and
confusing. Over the past four decades, there
have been numerous revivals and revisions, fre-
quently in direct collaboration with Bernstein
and his estate.
The overture immediately conjures an opti-
mistic atmosphere with its preview of selected
themes from the operetta. The young man Can-
dide is betrothed to the lovely ingenue Cune-
gonde. Dr. Pangloss philosophizes that “All is
for the best in the best of all possible worlds,” a
rather naive statement immediately challenged
by a series of misfortunes: Cunegonde’s alleged
death, a death sentence imposed upon Candide
and Dr. Pangloss by the Inquisition, the death of
Pangloss, slavery, shipwreck, and poverty. Can-
dide eventually renounces his teacher’s ideology
and decides that the only way is “to make one’s
own garden grow.”
Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
Scored for timpani, snare, tenor, and bass drums,
triangle, suspended cymbal, tambourine, Chinese
blocks, xylophone, glockenspiel, chimes, harp,
strings, and solo violin
Great literature inspired Leonard Bernstein
the composer more than any other catalyst.
“It is certainly not an intimate revelation,” de-
clared his brother Burton, “to say that Len-
ny loved words every bit as much as he loved
notes.” His literary tastes ranged broadly, from
the philosophical essays of classic antiquity
to scriptural texts, Renaissance and Baroque
dramas, and contemporary prose and poetic
writings. Fellow pianist-composer-conductor
Lukas Foss claimed that “Lenny was the most
well-read composer I have ever met.” Many of
Bernstein’s compositions—the incidental music
for
The Birds
(1938) and
The Peace
(1940), both
plays by Aristophanes; Symphony No. 2 (“The
Age of Anxiety”; 1949), based on W.H. Auden’s
poem of the same name;
West Side Story
(1957),
based on William Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Ju-
liet
; and
Songfest: A Cycle of American Poems
(1977) among numerous other examples—vali-
date Foss’s opinion.
Literature again fired Bernstein’s imagination
during 1954, the year he took a hiatus from
conducting (“financial idiocy on my part”) to
concentrate on two major compositional proj-
ects. During the summer, he and his wife, Feli-
cia, leased a house on Martha’s Vineyard, where
Lenny could collaborate with librettist Lillian
Hellmann on a musical theater adaption of Vol-
taire’s satirical 1759 novella
Candide
,
ou l’Opti-
misme
. Concurrently, Bernstein labored on an
orchestral composition for violinist Isaac Stern;
inspiration came from the impromptu exposi-
tions on the merits of Eros in Plato’s
Symposium
.
A symposium (literally, “drinking together”)
in ancient Greece was an informal but highly
ritualized social gathering of aristocratic men
around dinner, conversation, song, philosophiz-
ing, the occasional female flutist or high-class
courtesan, and often excessive quantities of wine
diluted with water. Homes of the wealthy includ-
ed an extravagantly decorated
andron
(“room
for men”) with colorful frescoes on the walls
and elaborate tile mosaics on the floors where
the symposia took place. These rooms contained
seven, eleven, or fifteen side tables and couches,
each of which could be occupied by one or two
individuals. Many evenings concluded with the
attendees singing songs (
skolion
), passed from
one man to another, to the accompaniment of
a lyre.
Plato’s
Symposium
, written around 380–375 BCE,
describes a fictitious gathering of seven educat-
ed, influential, and aristocratic residents of Ath-
ens, each of whom praises the god Eros and ex-
pounds on the erotic love and acts of heroism he
inspires. These luminaries deliver monologues
or speak in dialogue in Bernstein’s five-move-
ment
Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
. The
Leonard Bernstein
Bust of Plato (misidentified as Zeno)
Depiction of a symposium on ancient Greek pottery
Original 1956 cast of
Candide
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