“There aren’t many operettas as funny—or as incisive—as Candide,” writes Georgia Rowe in Tuesday’s (5/12) San Jose Mercury News (California). “Adapted from Voltaire’s satirical 1759 novella, Leonard Bernstein’s rollicking score is both an assured musical creation and a sharp-edged social critique. For Oakland East Bay Symphony music director Michael Morgan, those qualities make Candide one of Bernstein’s most enduring works. As he prepares to lead the orchestra, the Oakland Symphony Chorus, and six principal vocalists in a concert performance Friday at the Paramount Theatre, Morgan says he can’t wait to return to it.… Morgan, who started his musical career as a Bernstein protégé, counts the great American composer-conductor among his primary influences. He first heard Candide while studying conducting at Oberlin College in Ohio, and still considers it one of Bernstein’s most brilliantly constructed scores…. ‘I do think it’s better as a concert piece than it is fully staged,’ he said. ‘The reason is that there are so many changes of locale…. In a concert, you can just keep going—the singers put on a hat or a sash or a mask, and you’re on to the next thing.’ ”
Posted May 13, 2015
