P.S. on Bernstein
Nov. 10th, 2009 07:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI couldn't see where to stick it in in my previous post, but I did want to add one word on Bernstein's stage work, and that is regret that the concert found no room for vocal selections from my favorite of his works of that kind, Candide. The pianists played the overture, but it's a standard - which the concert otherwise mostly avoided - and an anomaly at a vocal concert.
Candide was not a success at its original production, but that was mostly the fault of a badly-written script. (Same thing was true of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Like almost everything Alan Lerner wrote after Fritz Loewe retired, it was a complete disaster, but the reviews make clear that it wasn't Bernstein's music to blame.) For years the overture was all you could hear of Candide, but even before Bernstein's death it began to come back in improved revised versions - one of his last projects was a new recording - and if you want to watch the delightful semi-staged "Great Performances" production under Marin Alsop (a Bernstein student and one of his great current champions), with Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone - come on, how could you not? - it's hiding on YouTube in 12 parts, with the first part on direct link here and the others findable in the sidebars.
I wish some of this could have been done at the concert, with more time. True, Cunegonde is a coloratura soprano if there ever was one, and the brassy mezzo we had, Judy Kaye, should on no account attempt "Glitter and Be Gay", but the Old Lady's Song ("I am so easily assimilated") would have been perfect for her (the chorus part would have had to be cut off), and she and baritone William Sharp could have done well with Cunegonde and Candide's marriage song in the first act, perhaps transposed down a bit.
Candide was not a success at its original production, but that was mostly the fault of a badly-written script. (Same thing was true of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Like almost everything Alan Lerner wrote after Fritz Loewe retired, it was a complete disaster, but the reviews make clear that it wasn't Bernstein's music to blame.) For years the overture was all you could hear of Candide, but even before Bernstein's death it began to come back in improved revised versions - one of his last projects was a new recording - and if you want to watch the delightful semi-staged "Great Performances" production under Marin Alsop (a Bernstein student and one of his great current champions), with Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone - come on, how could you not? - it's hiding on YouTube in 12 parts, with the first part on direct link here and the others findable in the sidebars.
I wish some of this could have been done at the concert, with more time. True, Cunegonde is a coloratura soprano if there ever was one, and the brassy mezzo we had, Judy Kaye, should on no account attempt "Glitter and Be Gay", but the Old Lady's Song ("I am so easily assimilated") would have been perfect for her (the chorus part would have had to be cut off), and she and baritone William Sharp could have done well with Cunegonde and Candide's marriage song in the first act, perhaps transposed down a bit.
