Making Sense of Life: Andrea Dorf McGray on Bernstein's Candide

Next in our opera week of wonders we look at Leonard Bernstein's Candide, an operetta based on the novella by Voltaire. You can read the novella online, but particularly illuminating is the last chapter here, where the moral of the outlandish story reveals itself. 

Considering the challenge of adapting Voltaire and the beautiful simplicity of the libretto's poetry, it's interesting to note that the book was a decades-long work in progress begun by Lillian Hellman, after which Bernstein collaborated with director Harold Prince and new writers on the revival, including Dorothy Parker, Richard Wilbur (who wrote most of the lyrics, including those to "Glitter and Be Gay"), John LaTouche, James Agee, Stephen Sondheim, and many others, including Bernstein and his wife.

The first version, featuring Barbara Cook as Cunegonde, opened on Broadway in 1956 and Harold Prince revived the piece again on Broadway as late as 1997. If only more operas could find their path to the Great White Way over the course of four decades!

Our contributor for this piece is director Andrea Dorf McGray, who is based in the Washington, D.C. area and has done a great deal of work for Washington National Opera and Maryland Opera Studio.

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Having done a semi-staged production of basically the concert version of the show, there are a slew of themes, aspects and questions that continue to fascinate me about this opera. Here are a few.

1) The notion of the personal responsibility that each of us carries for our own lives and for our own little parts of the world. 

After all the dizzying ins and outs of the story, the round-the-world trip of exotic locations, unusual people and twists in the plot, the whole opera zeros in like a laser on the final two numbers, the reprise of “Universal Good,” followed by “Make our Garden Grow.” And its here that I believe we find the central question that the story asks: how do we make sense of life?

Using fantastic imagery to illustrate moral narratives: Hieronymus Bosch's Hell

In the reprise of the “Universal Good” music, the text changes from its previous poetry to the following: 

“Life is neither good, nor bad. Life is life, and all we know.
Good and bad, and joy and woe, are woven fine, are woven fine.” 

And in “Make our Garden Grow,” Candide sings, 

“And let us try, before we die, to make some sense of life. 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.”

What I find in these pieces of text, and in the soul-stirring music to which they are set, is a call to believe that though life is far from perfect, and indeed often contains horrid, beyond awful things, we do have a purpose here. It is to join together (“come and be my wife”), to work the daily tasks of life (“build our house, chop our wood”), and in so doing to create our own gardens of Eden (“make our garden grow”). 

Paradise is not out there to be found; it must be grown right here, in each of our corners of the land. We are the ones responsible for the planting, the nurturing, the reaping, and the re-sowing; we are the ones responsible for the present and future hope and happiness of ourselves and our communities.

2) The hero’s journey. 

Candide’s world shatters over and over again throughout the story. With his faith in Optimism so strongly intact at the beginning, he is able to rally a few times. As the story plays out, however, that faith begins to shake, and he starts to rely more on his wits, his friends, and the sustaining strength that his love for Cunegonde provides. But it is in “Nothing More Than This” that Candide hits bottom; he realizes that this ideal woman that he has carried in his heart, this dream that kept him going through all manner of hell, this “angel face with flaxen hair,” is just a money-grubbing, shallow person.

Material Girls: Cunegonde portrayed, from left, by Kristin Chenowith, Marnie Breckenridge, and Anna Christy

Candide had confidently centered the meaning of his life on the love he felt for Cunegonde, a woman, it turns out, whose real core he did not know. At the end of his journey, he shifts to searching for the meaning of life by engaging in the small, daily tasks of life – chopping wood, baking bread, growing food, building shelter. 

There is something quite spiritual in this shift, in the recognition that the meaning of life is not a static answer to be found, but rather it’s a dynamic act with which we must engage.

Two writers that I would like to saturate myself in further when considering a full production of Candide are Wendell Berry and Anne Lamott. 

Wendell Berry in his world

I imagine that what these two authors have to say about the little things in life, and how the little things actively create the ever-changing big picture of life, would be very useful in thinking more deeply about the story and about Candide’s journey.

3) The comedy and tragedy of this opera turn on a dime. 

It’s one of the most amazing and beautiful aspects of the piece, and it makes me think of the Harold Clurman quote:  

“The truth is like castor oil. It’s difficult to take and hard to swallow, so we get them to laugh and while their mouths are open, we pour a little in.”

Finding the right spin so that the two sides of the one coin that is life – the comedy and the tragedy – are examined, belly-laughed over, cried tears over, and ultimately lifted up – is the great joy of rehearsing and producing this opera. 

Learn more about Andrea Dorf McGray's work at www.andreadorf.com