![]() Assuming a mock pompous tone when explaining the philosophical background of l'optimisme, he suddenly broke off, saying, "Oh, the hell with it! Let's play the overture."īernstein's little professorial act doesn't quite come off when it is watched on the Deutsche Grammophon video of that concert. He began the evening by speaking to the audience, calling himself "the old professor" and describing, in his best rabbinical manner, the historical motivations for Voltaire to write his famous satire on optimism and our own continuing struggle with good and evil. ![]() And although Bernstein's voice croaked worse than ever, ill with a flu (and also suffering from the emphysema that would kill him almost exactly 10 months later), he typically couldn't keep quiet. ![]() It was an evening of great emotion, the first (and only) time in his life that Bernstein had conducted what many feel is his best score (popular or serious) it was also the first time all the music to the show had, at last, been heard. It was a gala concert performance in London of his Candide, offered with a cast of some of our most celebrated opera stars, young and old. Article about the Los Angeles production by Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1995Īt the end of 1989, Leonard Bernstein conducted one of his most exultant concerts in a lifetime of exultant music making.
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