A Couple of Scenes from Candide

In 1958, a comic opera adapted from Candide was presented on Broadway, with music by Leonard Bernstein, story and dialogue by playwright Lillian Hellman, and lyrics by some of the prominent poets of the day. It flopped mightily. Fifteen years later, director Harold Prince decided that a problem with the original show had been the seriousness with which people took the project. Voltaire had passed off his story in 1759 as a schoolboy prank: although his ideas were meant seriously, the story's tone and attitude were no more respectable than, I dunno, South Park I guess. The 1958 Broadway team had approached the piece with High Seriousness as a Classic Work of Art: Prince kept the Bernstein music and some of the lyrics, threw out the old libretto, had his friend Stephen Sondheim write some new lyrics, cast young people rather than opera stars in the lead roles, and included plenty of low comedy. The new version was a big success, and has been the basis of subsequent versions, although various directors have kept introducing little revisions since.

Here's a couple of scenes from the 2005 production. We get to learn about Dr. Pangloss's philosophy and about Candide and Cunegonde's different views of The Good Life.