If you're contemplating staging a new production of a classic opera, the period of its composition is well worth investigating. Though a piece may be set in a particular time, its real concerns are often those of the world of its creators. Der Rosenkavalier, for example, says as much and possibly more about the 1911 Dresden of its first performance than it does about the 18th-century Vienna of the empress Maria Theresa.
In his new production of Candide for English National Opera, Robert Carsen has taken the bold step of updating the work to the place and time of its first performance: the United States in 1956. Michael Levine's striking set is literally that: a vast television set, its screen filling the entire proscenium. As Leonard Bernstein's blissful, exuberant overture opens, we watch a pacy, colourful montage of documentary footage of Fifties America.
Though the cross-cutting may distract the audience from listening to the music, these images inspire confidence in the producer's big idea. Voltaire's original Candide was concerned with Leibniz's belief of Optimism (not yet merely meaning you always look on the bright side) - that evil in the world was illusory and that we lived in the best of all possible worlds. Why not bring that up to date by identifying one of its modern forms, the ecstatic materialism of Eisenhower's America and its sunny complacency that things could only get better?
It's a really great concept. Sadly, however, it soon falls apart. The basic story follows the fortunes of four young people - Candide, Cunégonde, Maximilian and Paquette - who are taught by their tutor, Dr Pangloss, to believe that they live in the best of all possible worlds. After they are cast out of their home in Westphalia, they suffer a picaresque variety of trials, including war, massacre, rape, murder, syphilis, betrayal, infidelity, prostitution, two shipwrecks, an earthquake and an auto-da-fé. These lead them to a more sombre appraisal of the state of the world and human character. They sing: "We're neither pure nor wise nor good/We'll do the best we know./We'll build our house, and chop our wood,/And make our garden grow."
Carsen accompanied this final, uplifting chorus with projected images of drought, deforestation and other consequences of global warming to remind us of the current US government's indifference to climate change. This was the last of the clunking anti-American attacks that permeated the production.
Nothing was too trivial to add to the prosecution evidence: the Ku Klux Klan, overweight white trash, born-again bigotry, McDonald's as cultural imperialism (this even drew some applause), as well as the invasion of Iraq. It's not that there aren't genuine complaints to be made about America's foreign policy; it's just that it was done here with such a blunderbuss approach and such insufficient wit (for instance, with "Westphalia" becoming "West Failure").
In the auto-da-fé scene, Bernstein and his collaborators were indeed consciously implying a parallel with the McCarthy Senate hearings, but it is hard to believe they would have appreciated the heavy-handed lines given to the judges making it clear that execution is what "Jews" and "liberal intellectuals" deserve.
It seemed sad that in this, a version of one of the most famous works of the Enlightenment, Voltaire's observations on universal human behaviour and the obligation on all of us to attempt, however modestly, to improve the world have been turned into a crass condemnation of a single nation.
There were, however, many pleasures still to be found in this Candide. Bernstein's music offers mercurial pastiches, and the original lyrics remain as witty as ever. Carsen makes some successful raids on the dressing-up box of American popular culture - from the cross-dressing of Some Like It Hot to Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" for the aria "Glitter and Be Gay".
There was a strong line-up vocally, though such fine singers as Toby Spence (Candide) and Anna Christy (Cunégonde) seemed occasionally constrained by being miked up - as, indeed, was the whole cast. Alex Jennings played a very droll Dr Pangloss (and also Voltaire) and Beverley Klein's performance as the kvetching Old Lady brought a genuine Broadway pizzazz whenever she was on the stage.
