I first heard this on UK radio at around 1988 and was rather impressed. A gloomy sort of storyline that was not gloomy at all because the music was fun. A lot of short songs linked by a very easy to listen to narration.
I had thought that this was the Barbican version, but now I assume that it will have been the Scottish Opera version of a year earlier. There is a big difference.
Recently I managed to purchase DVDs of Bernstein's Trouble In Tahiti and Candide and this is my comment re Candide.
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Search for a DVD of Candide there are several versions, each including a different range of songs and the songs have variations too. I felt a need for a comprehensive collection, ideally the one that I had heard on the radio because that was so marvellous, my motivation for trying to get a DVD. I found adverts for four different versions and none showed the song list.
What I purchased was a DGG VMP disk from the two 1989 Barbican concerts, London. Bernstein is conductor and Hadley and Anderson sing two of the leads. Direction is by Humphrey Burton who is an expert re Bernstein stuff. It is a concert hall rather than theatre performance, from websites this appears to be what is now understood to be the best way to stage the work.
At 147 minutes it is the longest of the disks that I noticed and so seemed likely to be the most comprehensive. Believing that it was likely to be a copy of what I had heard on the radio made this extra special. It turned out to be very different to what I had expected.
My first few viewings of this were nowhere near as fun as what I had hoped. The big reason why is that the narration has been changed, much longer and with a very different feel. The 116 minute Hollywood actor version might easily have most of the songs if the narration script is like the fun 1988 script, I would not know.
This is Bernstein a year before he died and he seems to have been taking an opportunity to tidy things up by giving a performance that explained what the story was actually about. It does that clearly, just the fun of the music falls flat, for me. Reviews of performances of Candide often agree with me on that. To me, this shows Candide to be about the modern world and I feel a need for an escape from the modern world. I admire the approach of that broadcast radio version.
For me to properly like my disk I would need just to hear the whole thing once or twice and then skip some of the non-music chapters, ie I would need an edited version, one with several chapters pruned out. I feel the same about A Hard Day's Night, a bigger pruning challenge. What I did was put the disk aside for a few months and then play it missing out most parts with Bernstein's technical comments, chapters 2, 30, 36 and 37 and the entries of the performers, chapters 1 and 34. If practical I would have preferred to edit out some fine detail in the narration but this was enough to allow the music to shine for me as it did at that radio broadcast.
This disk is more expensive than most DVDs that I purchase but this and the Hollywood were the cheapest for Candide when I purchased. I find Candide to be brilliant, just one could use a clear guide if one is hoping to purchase. There are web sites that give some information re key performances and audio recordings. I found there to be a shortfall re the DVD versions.
