By GEORGE LOOMIS [NY Sun, 11 April 2008]

One of Beverly Sills's landmark achievements as general director of New York City Opera was the company's 1982 production of Leonard Bernstein's "Candide." It wasn't that Harold Prince's production was particularly outstanding, though it was well received. Rather, the achievement was that it marked the first staging of this famously problematic work, originally seen on Broadway in 1956, that presented Bernstein's score in a reasonably full version and that won critical and popular acclaim.