For more than 30 years, 35 years to be exact, people have asked me: "Why Candide?  Whither and whence Candide?"  And I thought I might answer a bit more clearly by speaking not only as the composer of this work, but as an everyday observer of history, like anyone here, but particularly of the period of history known as the Age of Enlightenment, roughly the 18th century.  And that was the century in which Voltaire lived, wrote and had extraordinary influence.

His masterpiece was a tough, skinny little novella called Candide, which inspired the playwright Lillian Hellman and me to have a bash at it musically.  Voltaire's book was actually entitled Candide, or Optimism, it being a viciously satirical attack on a prevalent philosophical system known as Optimism, which was based on the rather indigestible writings of a certain Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and popularized by our own, beloved Alexander Pope, for example in this great line from his Essay on Man: "One truth is clear — whatever is, is right."

Now, according to Leibniz, whose ideas Pope was lyricizing, if we believe in a Creator, then he must be a good Creator, and the greatest of all possible creators, and therefore could have created only The Best of All Possible Worlds.  In other words: "Everything that is, is right."  Granted that in this world the innocent are mindlessly slaughtered and that crimes goes mostly unpunished, that there is disease and death and poverty.  But if we could only see the whole picture, the divine and universal plan, then we would understand that whatever happens is for the best.  Thus spake Leibniz.  Naturally Voltaire found this idea absurd every day of his life, but particularly on that day in 1755 when all of Lisbon, Portugal exploded in an earthquake, and uncountable numbers of people were drowned, crushed, burned alive, exterminated.  Now if Leibniz was right, said Voltaire, then God is just playfully spraying his flit gun and down go a million mosquitos, at random, haphazardly.

Well, the Lisbon disaster was the last straw for Voltaire and provoked him to write Candide, in which he lashed out against all established authority, royal, military, or mercantile, but most of all in the power of the Church, which actually was burning heretics at the time, burning them alive to prevent earthquakes.  How can anyone believe that "everything is right and good" when there is every indication of evil on all sides?  Quite apart from natural disasters, or horrifying accidents, there seems to be far too much deliberate evil on the part of us human beings for anyone to believe that this can be the best of all possible worlds.

The particular evil which impelled Lillian Hellman to choose Candide and present it to me as the basis for a musical stage work was what we now quaintly and, alas, faintly recall as McCarthyism — an "ism" so akin to that Spanish inquisition we just revisited in the first act as to curdle the blood.  This was a period in the early '50s of our own century, exactly 200 years after the Lisbon affair, when everything that America stood for seemed to be on the verge of being ground under the heel of that Junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, and his inquisitorial henchmen.  That was the time of the Hollywood Blacklist — television censorship, lost jobs, suicides, expatriation and the denial of passports to anyone even suspected of having once known a suspected Communist.

I can vouch for this.  I was denied a passport by my own government.  By the way, so was Voltaire denied a passport by his.  His answer was satire, ridicule, and through laughter to provoke in his reader self-recognition and, of course, self-justification — Who me?  Not me!  — which produces discussion, makes debate, and debate is, after all, the cornerstone of democracy.

So Lillian and I were naturally magnetized by Voltaire's mordant wit and wisdom.  We quickly set about our work with a young whiz lyricist called John La Touche, who wrote the second of the two syphilis songs you heard in Act I.  The other syphilis song you heard, equally inspired, if somewhat more literary, was written by our second great lyricist, Richard Wilbur, who was until recently Poet Laureate of the United States.  These are only two of perhaps dozens of people who have contributed in one way or another to the highly checkered career of this work, to mention but a few, Hal Prince, Stephen Sondheim, Maestro John Mauceri, Dr. Jonathan Miller . . . But enough about me!

Forthcoming

"Any questions?" asks Dr. Pangloss at the end of the newest recording of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, conducted by the composer about a year before his death.  Anyone who has followed the history of this operetta (musical? opera?) for its 35-odd years of existence is likely to have nothing but questions.  The better you know it, the more likely you are to ask about any new production or recording: What music does it include?  Sung by which characters?  In what order?  With whose lyrics?  Which story does it tell, and where does it go to tell it?

Candide was born complicated, its life has steadily been getting more complicated, and the only basis for believing that the complications will ever subside is the new set's bold assertion just below the title: "final revised version, 1989."  Based on Voltaire, Candide tells of a young man who, having been taught that everything that happens must be for the best, travels the world experiencing one disaster after another until in disillusionment he repudiates such philosophy in favor of a simple life.  Candide's companions on his journey are his beloved Cunegonde, his mentor Dr. Pangloss, and a worldly-wise Old Lady whom they meet.  All details beyond this brief outline have been changed incessantly during the three chapters fo the show's history.

The first chapter was the most eventful.  A collaboration between Bernstein and the librettist Lillian Hellman involved John Latouche, and later Richard Wilbur, as principal lyricist.  (Bernstein, Hellman, and Dorothy Parker supplied additional lyrics.)  The show evolved constantly, as musicals do, during a long period of writing, rehearsal and out of town tryout.  Its short Broadway run in 1956-57 produced a recording and a cult following.  A stream of revisions by various hands followed for other productions over the next 15 years, the last of which was a 1971 revival that aimed for Broadway but closed in Washington.  Within Hellman's basic framework, each attempted to improve the work by revising the libretto, reinstating discarded music, even eliciting new music from Bernstein on occasion.

The second phase, in which Bernstein was merely a bystander, began in 1973 with a completely new libretto, involving a different selection of incidents and music, presented in one act as a zany farce.  This version, with book by Hugh Wheeler and some new lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, was directed by Harold Prince for the Chelsea Theater in Brooklyn and transferred to Broadway in 1974 for a successful run.  John Mauceri, who assembled the score, also supervised its expansion in 1982 into a two-act "opera house version" with most of the missing music from 1956 restored, albeit in new order and contexts.

As the music director of the Scottish Opera, Mr. Mauceri seized the chance to create one more Candide, this time with the composer involved.  Keeping some features of the 1973 revision but returning in the main to the Hellman scenario (libretto is now credited to Wheeler and John Wells), this version incorporates probably as much of Candide's music as can fit into one evening.  A 1989 concert performance based on this edition, with Bernstein conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, provided the occasion for Deutsche Grammophon's recording.

The new release has been accompanied by statements about recapturing the work's inherent seriousness, after the frivolities of the Wheeler-Prince version.  One can endorse the intent while pointing out that seriousness need not mean solemnity and that much of the score needs to sparkle and fizz; the best-known numbers, the overture and the coloratura parody-showpiece "Glitter and Be Gay" are perfect examples.  Other sections, including the "Ballad of Eldorado" and the concluding "Make Our Garden Grow", do indeed work on a less buffo, more heartfelt level.

The two aspects seem in reasonable balance in the choice of music for the 1989 edition, with a recurrent chorale, "Universal Good", as a unifying reminder that a search for faith is going on, just as in other works by Bernstein: Mass, The Age of Anxiety, Kaddish, and A Quiet Place.  The placement of music, too, is far more satisfactory than in the 1982 score, with most numbers in their original contexts and order, and with "Candide's Lament" at last situated early enough to function as the first statement of the musical theme that unifies much of the score.

The Candide collector will find plenty of novelties here, and not just in music previously recorded in specialized anthologies or not at all: even some material that has been unchanged through all previous versions has been modified (for instance, the postlude of "Glitter and Be Gay".)  The "Sheep Song" from 1973 aside, just about all the music contained on any previous recording is here, and much more besides.  Some sections of the published 1956 score receive their first full recording: the "Auto da fe" sequence combines several layers of revision and incorporates Pangloss's "Ringaroundarosy".  The two later additions, "We Are Women" and "Words, Words, Words", are included; likewise some early discards tried in various revivals, like "The Kings' Barcarolle" and Candide's final anguished aria, "Nothing More Than This".

For its inclusiveness, the new Candide should be welcomed by anyone interested in Bernstein or musical theater.  The performance has its attractions, too, but the composer's leadership is not one of them.  He had not conducted Candide before, and his advocacy here led him to a heavy-handed approach — tempos weighted toward the slow side (broadening still more at many cadences), sonority toward the bass register and brass timbres, articulation toward the emphatic, overall balance toward the orchestra, with a massively sonorous chorus surrounding it. 

These tendencies shortchange the lighter side of Candide — and less expectably, the more serious side, too, for they draw attention away from active involvement.  The unaccompanied final chorus fails to bring a tear to the eye as it usually does, because Bernstein, wanting to make the most moving performance ever, stretches it out laboriously instead of sweeping through it steadily.  A more appealing side of his conducting is the affectionate care he shows for rhythmic, harmonic and instrumental details throughout.

The cast acquits itself well within this monumental framework.  Candide needs a graceful tenor voice, a boyish manner and a gift for simplicity and clarity, and Jerry Hadley provides exactly these qualities.  June Anderson's fluent high soprano makes light work of Cunegonde's fiendish demands.  (Her weakest moment is in the first section of her big showpiece, where her veiled "sad" tone clings to the underside of the pitch.)

Christa Ludwig, after decades at the top of her profession, remains an utter delight as she sails through the Old Lady's music, with humorous verve.  Adolph Green, an experienced popular-style performer, might seem an odd choice for Pangloss, but he manages quite well, providing a plausible approximation of a patter-comedian in the Gilbert and Sullivan vein and handling demanding music with aplomb.  Another operatic veteran, Nicolai Gedda, does sound his age at several points but survives the Governor's vocal challenges with canny professionalism.  The fresh voices of Della Jones and Kurt Ollmann are welcome as Paquette and Maximilian, and quintet of British reliables fills out the enembles stylishly.

With five recordings on the market, it has become impossible to say simply "Buy version X"; good things are scattered around on several sets.  Jerry Hadley is a personable Candide; so were Robert Rounseville and David Eisler.  The most completely satisfying Cunegonde is Marilyn Hill-Smith, but June Anderson ranks high, and Barbara Cook still sounds more legitimate than one might expect alongside her operatic successors.  Irra Petina, Ann Howard, and Christa Ludwig, each in her own way, are equally irresistable as the Old Lady.  The conductors who maintain the best balance among the score's styles and moods are Samuel Krachmalnick and John Mauceri.

Deutsche Grammophon has helped its cause with excellent presentation: its booklet includes a helpful and thoughtful essay by Andrew Porter and all the lyrics (author of each identified), with synopsis interspersed to connect one lyric with the next — a user-friendly format that merits wider adoption.

So where does that leave someone who simply wants to enjoy a recording of Candide?  In need of at least two recordings to cover all the possibilities: for the spirited realization of the effervescent side of the work, the recording of the original production on CBS; and for its able cast, full ration of music and incorporation of the composer's last thoughts, the new Deutsche Grammophon.  Any more questions?

Candide has undergone numerous metamorphoses since its inception in 1956 (detailed in our August issue), but in whatever guise, it continues to grow in stature with the passing years.  This recording — Leonard Berstein's last — is of the "final revised version," capturing the verve and bounce of the score (which the composer never had conducted before) as well as its underlying seriousness.

Candide begins with a sweeping first-act pace but has had — and continues to have — what Broadwayites call "second-act troubles", turning too episodic before the unifying crescendo finale, "Make Our Garden Grow".  It is not helped by Bernstein's insistence on inserting the mawkish Candide soliloquy (to Bernstein's own text) "Nothing More Than This."

DG's recording makes a good case for the final revision.  Bernstein's conducting for the most part ebullient and infectious, stirs a generally fine cast, including strong contributions from veterans Christa Ludwig and Nicolai Gedda.  Jerry Hadley's pure, simple tenor perfectly encompasses the wide-eyed naiveté of Candide and is expressive into the bargain, while Adolph Green's parlando Pangloss/Martin emphasizes a musical-theater inflection of text over vocalism.  The only question mark is June Anderson's Cunegonde, easily dominant in the coloratura but with a manner too mature and a voice that does not move quickly enough or with a width of dynamics for the sly mix of innocence and sophistication that the role requires.

No matter — this is Bernstein's show, and except for the cultists who prefer the abridged original Broadway recording, it is the Candide to have.

Leonard Bernstein's Candide has had a checkered history from its first Broadway incarnation in 1956.  What started as a potentially brilliant satirical romp, with a book by Lillian Hellman, turned quickly into the leaden misfire that lasted only 73 performances on Broadway.  Candide lived on only through the handful of excerpts on the original cast album, a few scattered concert performances, and an attempt to bring it back to Broadway in 1971.

In 1973, Hugh Wheeler and director Harold Prince fashioned a trivializing version, discarding the original book, as well as nearly half the music.  The next major attempt was at the New York City Opera in 1982.  This offered more music, but it stuck to Prince's tone of silly farce.

When Bernstein set out to record his problem child, he decided to go back to his original concept, and here we have a "definitive" edition that lives up to the word.  From the opening bars of the celebrated overture, a real sense of theatrical event can be felt — a bracing call to the audience to prepare for something brash, funny, wry, yet touching, and this is how this new Candide deserves to be received.

The music leaps out of the speakers, and the cast abets the conductor/composer all the way.  And because the score is finally in the correct order, with most of the forgotten or discarded numbers now included in their correct place, there is a tangible sense of musical and theatrical order never before heard on record.  The strengths are numerous — Jerry Hadley's impassioned hero, Adolph Green's enthusiastic Dr. Pangloss, Nicolai Gedda's outrageously funny Governor.  There are a few shaky moments, most notably a plodding, charmless "Glitter and be Gay" from June Anderson, and, sadly, veteran mezzo Christa Ludwig is quite out of voice as the Old Lady.  But this is Bernstein's show, and the love and passion with which he suffuses this engaging, varied, and moving score, makes this one of the few unforgettable releases of this or any year.

Leonard Bernstein's Candide, which first saw the light of day in 1956, has had a checkered history, to say the least.  Read all about it, not here but in Andrew Porter's thorough and engaging notes, which accompany the just-released Deutsche Grammophon recording of the work's final version, conducted by the late composer.

What Bernstein committed to disc several months before his death last year is a dazzlingly rich piece of musical theater.  Be forewarned, however, that, with DG's omission of linking narrative, some motivations in the incredibly wide-ranging (geographically, among other things) "book" become cloudy.  But even when plot is obscure, character is not — as in Candide's own impregnable idealism, the impudence of Cunegonde and the destructive optimism of Dr. Pangloss, who declares this to be the "best of all possible worlds."  And there's music, always music, flowing from every conceivable source — from the Viennas of Johann and Richard Strauss and of Schoenberg, in the sendup serialism of "Quiet," from Puccini's Italy, from Offenbach's Paris, from Broadway — in a totality that could have come only from master mixologist Bernstein. Candide always had good tunes.  It now has even more through the addition of fleshed-out sketches for and numbers deleted from previous versions.  This final Candide is, above all, great fun.  And whatever it may have lost in topicality since the McCarthy-era original — with its ham-handed political satire (one could defend paranoia in the mid-'50s; someone probably was after you) of principal writer Lillian Hellman, most of whose contribution was later jettisoned — it has gained in universality.

The various lyricists are clearly identified by DG, with Richard Wilbur given his deserved top spot.  The "additional lyrics" people here are responsible not so much for creating a hodgepodge of verse styles as best-of-all-possible-worlds variety: John La Touche, Dorothy Parker, Stephen Sondheim, Hellman and LB himself.*nbsp; And let's not forget the "concept" by Voltaire, set forth in his 1759 satirical novel about the titular innocent who seeks his utopia, finds it, deems it an OK place — peaceful but too predictable — and returns to his old neighborhood, its everyday problems and the possibility of overcoming them.  In Wilbur's final summation:

We're neither pure nor wise nor good;
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood,
And make our garden grow.

DG's cast never sounds mystified by or misplaced in the goings-on, as were some involved in the previous recording, the so-called Opera House Version of 1982, show-bizzily cobbled together under Harold Prince's supervision and offering more gloss than Pangloss.  Tenor Jerry Hadley's Candide is the ultimate innocent, honest and trusting to a fault, who grows into a serene maturity fed by experience.  And Hadley has recaptured the youthful timbre and elegance of delivery that marked his work of a decade ago, before he assumed heavier roles that, it seemed until now, had taken a permanent toll.  June Anderson is a delectably brassy Cunegonde who understands, without exaggerating, her role as the shopworn whore with a heart of tin.  Anderson fairly jumps out of the grooves (or whatever one jumps out of on CD) with a "Glitter and Be Gay" that is both in-context parody and self-sustaining coloratura showpiece.

Kurt Ollmann's supple baritone is handsomely employed in a couple of roles, and there are endearing contributions from two operatic veterans: Christa Ludwig as the Old Lady, delivering her hilarious Tango aria in an accent reminiscent of one her friend Leonard Bernstein employed for telling dialect jokes, and Nicolai Gedda in a triple assignment that shows him, at age 66, with more marketable vocal goods than many an internationally employed tenor decades his junior.

The one piece of casting that doesn't quite work is the Pangloss of Adolph Green, whose New York-American speech is at odds with the Doctor's pompous dimwit-isms.  The same Green, however, makes a feast of "Words, Words, Words" — text by Bernstein, for the otherwise expendable character of Martin — through sheer intelligence.  With his Pangloss, the hauteur of Max Adrian, from the 1956 original cast, is missed.

Bernstein, who conducts an unfailingly responsive London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, relishes his own score's wit and shows a keen awareness of his singers' needs — with one exception, his unsustainably slow tempo of Candide's "It Must Be So."  Perhaps even that will sound right with repeated listening.

Leonard Bernstein's Candide has been shadowed throughout its existence by a basic question: What is it — opera or Broadway show?  It began on Broadway in 1956 and ran for 73 performances, which would be a spectacular success for a new opera but spelled failure on Broadway.  It did better in revivals, with drastic revisions, and found a new identity (a rather uncomfortable compromise) in 1982 when it was adapted and adopted by the New York City Opera — an opera company with headquarters on Broadway.

Conductor John Mauceri, who was involved in but not satisfied with the City Opera version, made another revision, aided by Bernstein, and produced it at the Scottish National Opera in 1988.  This version (give or take a few final changes) was recorded in 1989 by Bernstein, a hand-picked cast and the London Symphony Orchestra and chorus.  Issued by Deutsche Grammophon and labeled the "final revised version," it is Bernstein's last recording of his music and it embodies his final opinion that Candide should be treated as an opera — mostly.  The cast includes such distinguished operatic voices as Jerry Hadley, June Anderson, Christa Ludwig, Nicolai Gedda, Della Jones and Kurt Ollmann.  Not to sacrifice its ambiguity entirely, it also includes Adolph Green, a quintessential Broadway personality, in the role of Pangloss.

This is not the best of all possible Candides, but it is the best we are likely to hear in the foreseeable future.  It puts a clear spotlight on the brilliant inventiveness of Bernstein's music and the lyrics by an array of writers including Dorothy Parker, Stephen Sondheim, Bernstein himself and (best of all) Richard Wilbur.  The singing is stylish, the voices good and the conducting definitive.

When it opened on Broadway in 1956, Candide was described as everything from "an artistic triumph" to a "a really spectacular disaster."  Over the past 35 years, this Leonard Bernstein/Lillian Hellman/Richard Wilbur collaboration has continued to be a source of controversy and confusion as it has resurfaced in various editions.  There was disagreement from the start as to whether is was more a musical or an opera; its original cast featured singers from both Broadway and the classical world, and Bernstein settled on calling it a "comic operetta."  In the course of various revisions and productions, some criticized it as overly pretentious and message-laden, while others complained that it gave a frivolous treatment to a fundamentally serious theme.

Bernstein, the ultimate personification of multiple contradictions and dichotomies, mostly left it to others to tinker with and revise Candide.  He gave his blessings to, but was not directly involved with, the 1973 Chelsea Theater production that became a Broadway hit (a one-act, abbreviated version that put a circus/carnival spin on the travels and misadventures of Voltaire's characters, who became cartoonish figures) and the related but more expansive 1982 New York City Opera production, which restored much music but maintained the 1973 Hugh Wheeler book and Harold Prince direction, which shifted some of the show's locales and redistributed portions of the music to different characters from the original.

In the last year of his life, Bernstein returned to Candide, which by then had undergone yet another revision.  For a 1988 Scottish Opera production, John Mauceri, a longtime Bernstein associate (who was music director for the 1973 and 1982 performances, and clearly felt the need for further work to get it right) went back to the original 1956 version for the overal structure of the piece and the placement of many songs and interludes.  He assemble a more complete, coherent Candide, restoring some numbers dropped before the Broadway opening and incorporating the most workable changes made for the Wheeler/Prince versions.

It is this latest incarnation — now dubbed the "final revised version" — of Candide that Bernstein turned to in 1989, when he conducted the work for the first time.  He cast it mostly with established opera singers, the one exception being Adolph Green, the veteran Broadway lyricist/performer, whose connection to Bernstein goes back 50 years.  What emerges is a more profound, expansive Candide that blends grandeur with whimsy — a Candide of far greater musical coherence than before.  None of the dash and wit of Bernstein's assorted affectionate pastiche numbers is lost, but the restoration and reordering of several haunting chorales and previously lost sections of important thematic development greatly deepen the work.  The hushed, somber "Universal Good" chorale, which is heard at three key points, charts the narrative's journey from confident, naive optimism through doubt and disillusionment.  The character of Candide becomes more central and crucial, less of a guileless youth and more of a thoughtful adult, with the restoration of the achingly beautiful "Ballad of Eldorado" and the climactic "Nothing More Than This," Candide's wistful recognition of simple truths.

The casting of Jerry Hadley as Candide is one of the recording's coups.  His clear, pure tenor and subtle characterization anchor the performances.  June Anderson, as Cunegonde, is more problematic.  Although her coloratura flights in "Glitter and Be Gay" are ravishing, she tends to impose a heavy-handed quality on Cunegonde's music.  A more flexible voice and a bit more imagination would have served the role better.  Christa Ludwig is delicious as she tries on different accents in the witty "I Am Easily Assimilated" (with its tango rhythm rendered especially sensually by Bernstein) and has fun with the weary and cynical Old Lady's other music.  Nicolai Gedda fits in well as he sings various corrupt characters.  Green is a bit rough in places, and sounds pressed as he tries to negotiate Pangloss's ironic little ditty about contracting syphilis (a restored section of "Auto-da-fé").  Most of the time his show-biz flair gets him through, and the abandoned venom with which he spits out "Words, Words, Words" (a previously unrecorded 1971 addition to the score) is impressive.

In several places — notably "Make Our Garden Grow" — Bernstein indulges in some unnecessarily slow tempos, but for the most part, he brings out all of the music's extravagant range of texture, rhythm and emotion, and he gives the work a dramatic pulse.  This is crucial, because his singers, unlike those on the original 1956 recording or the City Opera recording, did not have the advantage of rehearsing and performing Candide as a theatrical work, and one misses the more nuanced characterizations those earlier casts were able to develop.

In exchange, Bernstein's recording offers thrilling choral and orchestral climaxes, a rich, full sound, and a chance to appreciate the echoes of Mahler, Copland and others (as well as premonitions of Bernstein to come) that the complete work contains.  Candide many remain difficult to categorize, but the score, as presented here, clearly represents a pinnacle of American musical theater.  Drawing on the worlds of opera and Broadway, borrowing merrily from various national and historical approaches, Bernstein created a work that is both stirring and diverting — and one that resonates with his compassion for human frailties and abiding belief in human possiblity.

The very thorough booklet provides the identity of each song's lyricist (through the years, they have included Hellman, Sondheim and Bernstein) and includes an informative essay by Andrews Porter.

Leonard Bernstein's Candide is a wonderful piece of musical theater writing, arguably his — and the theater's — best.  But it has never been served well by its librettists.  The original book, by Lillian Hellman in her first attempt at a musical, strained to make Voltaire's 18th-century takedown of "the best of all possible worlds" pertinent to the paranoid 1950s.  Despite some favorable notices, the play sank of its own weight two months after its December 1956 launching, mourned only by a fierce cult of admirers.

After a series of short-lived revivals, a drastically refurbished version surfaced in 1973.  With a new book by Hugh Wheeler, added lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and arena-style staging by Hal Prince, Candide finally gained popular success-though lost in the circuslike goings-on were the glitter of the music and almost any shred of seriousness.  Another commercially successful rendering, by the New York City Opera in 1982, likewise undercut much of the Bernstein-Hellman message about the precariousness of idealism in a morally bankrupt world.  "This Candide," wrote conductor John Mauceri, "had turned into one long joke."

Surprisingly, Bernstein himself never conducted a Candide until shortly before his death.  Then, in December 1989, he weighed in with his own concert version, in a performance with the London Symphony Orchestra and chorus.  Followers of Candide's checkered saga have eagerly awaited the Deutsche Grammophon release of this version, and for good reason: reduced to the pure form of a concert, and beautifully sung by, among others, Jerry Hadley in the title role and June Anderson as his soiled love, Cunegonde, Bernstein's brilliant pastiche effectively captures Voltaire's dark satire of a faithless world.  Not only does the exhilarating score, from the full-sailed overture to the lovely final chorus, sound fresher than ever, but the lyrics, by the matchlessly witty likes of John La Touche, Richard Wilbur and, here and there, the composer himself, emerge with delightful clarity.

The inventiveness of the music may be more evident in the play's firs act ("Auto-da-fe," "Oh, Happy We, "Glitter and Be Gay") than in the somehow more predictable second.  But stay tuned to the end for Candide's Delius-like "Nothing More Than This," with Bernstein's own, love-struck lyric — and for the chastened finale, with a lyric close to verbatim Voltaire: "We're neither pure nor wise nor good;/We'll do the best we know./We'll build our house, and chop our wood,/And make our garden grow."  The performance is billed as "final revised version."  Let's hope so: this, at last, is the version that should lift Candide beyond cult status into immortality.

Leonard Bernstein wanted to be remembered as another Mahler. Unfortunately, his incredibly facile, ultimately underdeveloped talent as a composer seemed to mark him instead as another Offenbach.  When he tried to master profundity, Bernstein usually mustered banality.  When he was content to be clever, witty, naughty and, perhaps, a bit funky, he could be brilliant.  The best passages in Candide are indeed brilliant.  The worst are redundant, mawkish and/or a bit clumsy.  Encumbered with a plodding libretto concocted by too many literary chefs, this ode to Voltaire flopped on Broadway in 1956.  It has undergone numerous drastic revisions in the interim, amassing a loyal cult following in the process but, we are told, never realizing the composer's lofty goals.

In December, 1989, a fragile Bernstein traveled to London for an extended (some might say overextended), presumably definitive musical version of his comic opus.  He had never conducted it before.  Nine months later, on Oct. 14, 1990, he died.

Under the circumstances, this commemorative Candide stands as a sad testament.  It also stands, alas, as a compromised valedictory.  The drama, if it can be thus described, unfolds as a long and coy concert, with cutesy narrative recitation (written by Bernstein and John Wells) connecting the numbers.  The mostly stellar cast performs with dedication, despite a flu epidemic that reportedly ravaged the entire ensemble.  Bernstein croaks his words of introduction with stoic savoir-faire.  Seconding the singers, he mouths the text with relentless zeal, and conducts the London Symphony and Chorus with the choreographic brio that made him unique.  Watch those hips.

The solo crew is dominated by Jerry Hadley, properly wide-eyed and sweetly lyrical in the title role, and June Anderson, fleet and virtuosic as a rather dark-voiced Cunegonde.  Christa Ludwig, erstwhile mezzo-soprano diva, savors a rare camping trip as the quaint Old Lady.  Nicolai Gedda, at 64, sounds heroic if a bit rusty as the Governor.  The only serious casting liability involves Adolph Green, entrusted with the cynical smirks and central patter of Pangloss/Martin.  A longtime friend of Bernstein's and a writer responsible for numerous Broadway triumphs, he tries valiantly and charmingly —l if not very successfully — to impersonate a bona-fide singer.  For all its nostalgia and glamour, this Candide hardly represents the best of all possible operatic worlds.

The question here is not whether this video is a worthwile venture, but whether it is worth purchasing in place of or in addition to the Deutsche Grammophon compact disc featuring the identical cast.  The answer depends largely on your level of fascina­tion with this quirky but decidedly remarkable work and with its multi­faceted creator, Leonard Bernstein.

A Bernstein-supervised Candide has long been overdue: Given the many ver­sions of the work that have existed over the years and the growing respect it has recently been accorded, it seemed only natural for Bernstein to put his recorded imprimatur on it, much as he had done a few years back with West Side Story.  Sensing the significance of the project, the principal forces behind it no doubt recognized the need for some kind of visual documentation as well.  And so a concert version was put together at London's Barbican Centre in December 1989 shortly before the actual recording sessions; the video captures the event note for note.  That the project should end up being one of Bernstein's last before his death gives it an added poignancy.

As concert videos go, there is nothing unusual about this one.  Cameras follow conductor, soloists, orchestra and chorus in much the usual way.  Indeed, if any­thing, there's too little concentration on Bernstein, whose flashy podium manner may have been somewhat tempered by his poor health (as he put it, he was suffering from a case of "the royal flu," as were many of the soloists).  But what makes the video special is the sheer "liveness" of it: Virtually all the singers radiate in a way that is simply not possible on the record­ing.  A booming Jerry Hadley is the very personification of Voltaire's Candide, wide­eyed, innocent and ever sincere.  June Anderson brings the appropriate coquet­tishness to Cunegonde and her "Glitter and Be Gay" is a marvelous piece of work, especially when judged against her lack­luster studio interpretation.  Christa Ludwig captures the bizarre eccentricities of the Old Lady with confidence.  Even Adolph Green's musical insecurities as Dr. Pangloss/Martin (witness how Bernstein has to constantly adjust the tempo for him) can be forgiven, for his showmanlike presence reminds us that Candide got its start not in the opera house, but on Broadway.

Then too, there is the repartee among Bernstein, the performers and the audi­ence.  Ever the proud teacher, Bernstein interrupts the musical proceedings at sev­eral points to explain the philosophical underpinnings of Voltaire's novel and the reasons why he and Lillian Hellman chose to adapt it for the stage.  And to see Hadley clutch Anderson's hand at the start of the work's powerful concluding chorale, "Make Our Garden Grow," is to fully realize Candide's ultimate message of goodness and honesty.

But all is not quite so perfect.  For starters, the decision to piece together the work's rather twisted story line via narra­tion seems particularly misguided.  It makes the story more difficult to follow, especially since the narration is shared among the soloists, so it's hard to tell when they're in character and when they're simply narrating.  Also, for all the soloists' liveliness, the orchestra and cho­rus come off as rather disinterested in the affair.  Finally, there is the sound quality itself: On the VHS version I sampled, there was a terrible fuzziness throughout, particularly in loud passages; one can only hope the quality is better on Laserdisc.

As Dr. Pangloss might put it, in the best of all possible worlds, everyone could afford both versions of this Candide.  Otherwise, those interested in the work's purely musical qualities would be best sticking with the CD, while those interest­ed in Candide as a classic example of musical theater should opt for the video, even if it's of an unstaged performance.  Either way, consumers have a tough choice facing them.

Leonard Bernstein walks on stage and begins a spiel.  He calls himself "the old professor"; he quotes Leibniz; his voice croaking, he complains to the audience of having the flu.  Then, just as the conductor is about to reach the point of utter self-indulgence, he breaks off midsentence and launches into a warm, sensuous, expansive and utterly winning account of the Candide Overture.

That's how the Deutsche Grammophon video and laserdisc version of a gala live performance of Bernstein's musical Candide begins.  It was filmed two years ago in London, shortly before the composer's death, and the "old professor" had the brilliance to make theater out of his own infirmities by visibly triumphing over them.  Bernstein seems to transform himself from the sick, dying and pompously reflective old man he was to the Bernstein of exuberant podium spirits, the irrepressible performer and showman he also remained until the end.  Not only is such renewal exactly the point of Candide, in which the characters drawn from Voltaire's satirical novel cheerfully bounce back from the most gruesome ordeals; but music was, for Bernstein, a great healer, and this film is remarkable proof of it.

Much has already been made of this Candide. It was the first and only time Bernstein ever conducted a score that he originally wrote for the troubled 1956 Broadway production with dazzling lyrics by the poet Richard Wilber but an unworkable book by Lillian Hellman.  And the history of the work, in its various editions for both Broadway and, later, the opera house, is nearly as rocky and absurd as the journey of its headlong hero.  Books were changed, songs and choruses removed, new music added; every time the work was staged or recorded it was in a different version.  In the end, Bernstein's complete recording, with every scrap of music he wrote for various incarnations of the show salvaged, is more than twice as long as the original cast recording of 35 years earlier, and John La Touche, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim are now credited with additional lyrics.

To add further confusion, the new recording itself comes in different versions for audio and video (although they are misleadingly packaged with identical graphics).  The popular CD and audio-cassette release of last fall is a studio recording made a few days after the live performance documented on the video.  The videotaped concert includes narration, along with Bernstein's fascinating personal interjections to the audience, none of which were repeated in the studio.

The video is the one to have.  It is the livelier performance: In the studio Bernstein seems to address posterity; in the theater, he plays to crowd and camera.  But more important, the video also better reveals just what Bernstein had in mind with this performance by showing who and what he had become at the end of his career.  First of all, he had become an institution, and the concert on Dec. 13, 1989, at the Barbican Centre was an Occasion.  The orchestra was the London Symphony.  The cast featured stellar opera singers, young (June Anderson and Jerry Hadley) and old (Christa Ludwig and Nicolai Gedda), all splendid and all competing only in demonstrating their affection for Bernstein.  (Ms. Anderson wins, getting the biggest and wettest kiss after her "Glitter and Be Gay" aria.)  Once you have actually seen this cast, any Broadway roots — even with one old Great White Way trooper, Adolf Green, as Dr. Pangloss — appear long ago and far away.

Bernstein had also become a cliche; and there are, of course, all the familiar Lenny extravagances: He beats his breast at the start of "Glitter and Be Gay"; he loses himself in exquisite introspection during Candide's soul-searching "Lament"; he merrily waltzes along to one of his infectious dance tunes.  Had there been a lamp shade around, he probably would have put that on his head, too.  Some listeners have always found these antics insufferable; for others it helps the music become more vivid the same way good choreography can.  Most of us, though, have just learned to put up with them.

We put up with them because Bernstein, always searching, was a restless musician whose final years more and more now seem a spiritual quest, whose performances began to approach shamanistic events.  Even Candide.  Half a lifetime after he wrote it, Bernstein had far grander things on his mind than clever Broadway tunes or light operetta.  And throughout this performance there is an urgency to nearly every utterance, as if Bernstein were seeking genuine experience out of each of Candide's adventures, no matter how silly.  By the end, the once touching finale, "Make Our Garden Grow," which sent audiences home with a pleasant glow, now becomes the kind of transcendental moment found in the final raptures of a Mahler symphony or Wagner opera.

Indeed, transcendence became the real Bernstein trademark at the end of his career, and this can be heard over and over in the last recordings that have been trickling out on CD from Deutsche Grammophon, all tapings of live concerts.

Two months before performing Candide in London, the conductor led his last programs with the New York Philharmonic.  They included a shattering, blindingly tragic account of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony in which the fate motive cuts like a knife, and a Copland concert with what is easily the most luscious and creamy performance the Clarinet Concerto has ever received (Stanley Drucker is the soloist).  Immediately following the London Candide sessions, Bernstein traveled to Berlin to conduct a stirring, if grandiose, Christmas Day Beethoven Ninth, celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In February, Bernstein was in Vienna, where, with baritone Thomas Hampson and the Vienna Philharmonic, he produced a golden account of Mahler's five Rueckert Lieder.  With this performance, Bernstein's legendary identification with Mahler was complete; and the final song of that collection, "I Have Lost Touch With the World," taken at a mystically slow tempo, becomes Bernstein's own, unbearably heartbreaking, yet ethereally comforting, farewell.  Bernstein, some close to him claimed, had long before lost touch with the world, absorbed as he was in his own ego.  But he had also transcended it, as every note in this song attests.

And now, more than a year after his death, Bernstein's "new" recordings — there are still more to come, including a glorious Bruckner Ninth from Vienna and his last performance, an amazingly life-affirming Beethoven Seventh given at Tanglewood a couple of months before he died — remain news.