Welsh National Opera’s Candide has returned as part of its autumn season and, due to stringent Arts Council cuts, it’s one of only two productions, neither of which are new. Bernstein’s “hot mess of a piece”, labelled here as an operetta, is a reboot from 2023, while WNO’s Tosca, performed in a reduced orchestral version, was first aired several years ago by Opera North. Such is the fragile state of the Cardiff-based company. Yet despite its tenuous circumstances, Candide provides a much welcome tonic for the cast, if not necessarily a reason for optimism. One hopes that WNO can take comfort in the maxim of the German writer Gottfried Leibniz who believed that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”.
Based on Voltaire’s comically satirical novella of 1759 and his savage attack on the philosophy of optimism championed by Leibniz, Candide’s premiere initially prompted critical confusion (was it an opera, a musical, an operetta?) and has since generated as many revisions and adaptations as productions. Whatever version is used – with this revival expanding the role of the Narrator – the operetta is propelled by our continent-hopping Candide searching for his beloved Cunégonde and the truth of human existence. If our naïve hero is the centrepiece of a wafer-thin plot linked by a string of songs, WNO’s present director, James Bonas, believes the satire of Voltaire’s picaresque tale “remains as savage, apposite and resonant as it ever did”. Even more so perhaps in what Bonas contemptuously refers to as “people creating their own customised realities” – a clear pointer to present-day politics.
Candide has travelled a long way since its 1956 Broadway opening, its “chequered career” (Bernstein’s own words) not helped by the work’s episodic structure pursuing our protagonist around the world from Westphalia to Constantinople via the Alps and South America’s Amazonian jungles. Aside from the difficulty of casting multiple characters to one performer, there is the task of finding a suitably virtuosic soprano for the Mozartian showpiece ‘Glitter and be Gay’. To this challenge Soraya Mafi as Cunégonde rises magnificently – despatching the song’s stratospheric high jinks with all the technical wizardry of a trapeze artist. Mafi also amply fulfils the role of a much-ravished yet faithful lover to the hapless Candide, a honey-voiced Ed Lyon whose wide-eyed innocence (notwithstanding his three unintended murders) is nicely done, wistful in his lament and bringing plenty of heft in the Broadway-style ‘Make our garden grow’ where amplification regrettably brought some distortion for this performance at the Mayflower.
Rakie Ayola is well-defined as Dr. Pangloss and well projected as the story-telling narrator. A clear-voiced Amy J Payne impresses as the Old Woman and dispatching ‘I Am Easily Assimilated’ and aplomb and (in this revival) avoiding any complications over a missing left buttock. Elsewhere, Francesca Saracino is easy on the eye and ear as Paquette, Jack Holton amuses as the cross-dressing Maximillian, while Aled Hall almost steals the show as the rapacious Mexican Governor.
The absence of surtitles (despite being credited in the programme book) is unhelpful, but more considerate in this revival is the toned down and previously bewildering parade of brilliantly imaginative video animations created by the French illustrator Grégoire Pont. The eye is kept busy enough with a multitude of global locations: erupting volcanos (referencing Lisbon’s devastating 1755 earthquake), sheep-eating crocodiles, floggings (The Spanish Inquisition) and a zeppelin airship taking Candide and Cunégonde across the Atlantic, inflated by nothing more than a bicycle pump. Another clever visual touch are child-like scribblings projected across a gauze curtain which chime neatly with Candide’s schoolboy innocence. Added to this colourful display are an unnamed dance ensemble, Rob Casey’s atmospheric lighting and Nathalie Pallandre’s era-crossing costumes.
In the pit Ryan McAdams generates vivid playing from the WNO players who clearly relish every stylistic twist and turn of this eclectic score. In short, a slick evening performed with irresistible pizzazz.
David Truslove
Candide
Composer: Leonard Bernstein
Libretto: Lillian Hellman and revised by Hugh Wheeler (and adapted by Lonny Price) after Voltaire’s novella Candide, ou l’Optimisme
Cast and Production staff:
Candide – Ed Lyon; Cunégonde – Soraya Mafi; Dr. Pangloss/Narrator – Rakie Ayola; Maximillian – Jack Holton; The Old Woman – Amy J Payne; Governor – Aled Hall; Paquette – Francesca Saracino; Captain & Crook – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Director – James Bonas; Video & Animations – Grégoire Pont; Set Designer – Thibault
Vancraenenbroeck; Costumes – Nathalie Pallandre; Lighting – Rob Casey; Sound Designer –Sebastian Frost; Choreographer – Ewan Jones; Welsh National Opera Orchestra & Chorus; Conductor – Ryan McAdams
Mayflower, Southampton, 2 October 2025
Top image: Cast of Candide
All photos © Craig Fuller