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Opera & Musical Theater

Opera Cheat Sheet: Candide

A quick introduction to Leonard Bernstein’s enormously popular work, Saturday’s noon opera broadcast.

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In this OCS, Houston Public Media's St.John Flynn and Eric Skelly of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra give a quick and humor-filled overview of Bernstein's 1956 opera Candide, famous for its Overture and songs such as "Glitter and be Gay" and "Make Our Garden Grow."

Based on Voltaire's 1758 novel of the same name, Candide tells the story of the young man who learns the truth about existence through a bizarre sequence of fantastic events that take him from Europe to the New World and back.

You can listen to the Glimmerglass Opera broadcast of Candide, Saturday, November 21st at noon on Houston Public Media's Classical 91.7.

Scene from Bernstein's Candide
Photo by Liz Lauren.
Jesse Perez (Cacambo), Geoff Packard (Candide), and Rebecca Finnegan (Narrator) in CANDIDE, directed by Mary Zimmerman. At the Huntington Theatre Company’s B.U. Theatre 9/10-10/16/11. huntingtontheatre.org.