Newsday, March 2005

Irony of fate: Two music dramas involving Grand Inquisitors and public executions are playing at Lincoln Center. In the Met's Don Carlos, Verdi thunders and weeps, blessing the Inquisition's victims with a heavenly voice. In New York City Opera's Candide, Leonard Bernstein spins a giddy, sardonic chorus: "Oh what a day / for an auto-da-fé!" Hooded, abused prisoners stagger across the stage in both shows. Is someone trying to tell us something?

To be sure, Candide and Don Carlos share little else beyond their composers' great, compassionate hearts and unsurpassed melodic flair. But Candide's acknowledgments of natural and human-made calamities and its biting send-ups of music-theater conventions make it ever fresh and chastening. Coming less than a year after the New York Philharmonic's superb performance and telecast of Candide, City Opera's production reminds us that Bernstein's brash score can never be heard too often or without gain.

First, the minuses: This Candide sometimes drags, owing to less than ideal pacing and the cast's occasionally flat delivery of dialogue. The miking exaggerates the disparity between the men's resonant tones and the women's more delicate voices. And the City Opera Orchestra, which otherwise plays with captivating zest under music director George Manahan, offers an anemic reading of the boisterous overture.

Otherwise, Hal Prince's 1982 production (staged by Arthur Masella) has held up well. "Dr. Voltaire's Freaks & Wonders," the proscenium proclaims over Clarke Dunham's handsome, circus-style sets, shot through with plum and turquoise. Patricia Birch's hilarious choreography includes a shadow show with female puppets tossed and twirled to improbable heights, then let plunk unceremoniously.

Leading the strong cast are Broadway veterans Judy Kaye as the Old Lady and John Cullum as Voltaire, Pangloss and their various incarnations. Kaye's sterling musicianship and tart but unfussy handling of lyrics make the Barcarolle and "I Am Easily Assimilated" highlights of the show. Cullum tends to veer off tempo but remains a briskly commanding leading man.

As Candide, Keith Jameson offers crystalline enunciation in both dialogue and song, warmly beautiful tone and a sweetly hapless presence. Anna Christy, his beloved Cunegonde, sparkles but does not dazzle in "Glitter and Be Gay"; her bright voice and comic timing both perk up later. Stacey Logan as Paquette is pleasingly lewd and serves up a mean belt, while Kyle Pfortmiller makes a winningly vain and obtuse Maximilian.

Nanne Puritz and Deborah Lew (the Pink Sheep), Robert Ousley (featured in several roles, including the Baron) and Eric Michael Gillett (a lovably repulsive Don Issachar, among others) are standouts among the fine supporting players.

When Candide premiered in 1956, memories were still fresh of anti-Communist panic and the rebuke of Sen. Joseph McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" Half a century later, decency is as scarce as ever, and Bernstein's marvelous music drama has lost none of its power to tickle and sting.

CANDIDE. The Opera House Version: Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Richard Wilbur and others. New York City Opera, George Manahan conducting. Through next Saturday at Lincoln Center. Visit www.nycopera.com, or call 212-307-4100.