Candide at hit at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris

That looks fascinating!

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Well, the operetta wasn't written by a frenchman, and the original book took aim at America at the time (McCarthy, etc), so I think it's right on the mark.

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I, of course, realized that, but yes I agree, both Bernstein and Hellman saw Candide as analagous to America at the time, so there's nothing incongruous about this production at all.

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>But since it was written by a FRENCHMAN, don't you think they should try it closer to home?<

France is not quite the superpower it was in Voltaire's time. One needs new targets to keep satire fresh.

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Hi there,
I don't know if you can receive it, but, the Germano-French TV Channel Arte will broadcast this CANDIDE the 20/01/2007 at 22h10 (French Hour).

>And, of course, three of the four central characters are Westphalian, and the novella and musical both start and end in Westphalia. So Voltaire didn't set it primarily in France anyway.<

Yes, but that's because there was heavy censorship in France at the time Voltaire was writing it. He couldn't set it in France without risking imprisonment (since it satirizes the government, the church, etc.), so while the story takes place in other countries, it's largely a critique of France itself.

Hey, elmore3003, I actually did think about what you wrote before I posted what you did. I did anticipate that very objection.

But this production is set, it seems, in 1950s America, so it's not about the current administration. Of course, a George Bush figure appears in the "King's Barcarolle," but I assume we're supposed to believe that 50 years have passed since the first scenes. And that if Candide and Cunegonde are now in their upper 60s, then the Old Lady is very old indeed.

More seriously, unless you subscribe to a Tolstoyan view of history, it's hard to argue that the current administration (or, for that matter, the Eisenhower administration) does not (did not) have an immeasurably greater effect on other countries than Baron Thunder Ten Tronck's little province (if it even is a province) could have had. Though it may be that Voltaire might have subscribed to such a point of view.

And as SeanMartin suggests, it was Leibniz's philosophy that was being parodied. I would guess that this was one of the reasons for setting it in Westphalia. Though some think that it was more a parody of the French philosopher Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis.

In addition, it was published under a pseudonym, Monsieur le docteur Ralph. Voltaire always denied that it was written by him. And he was living in Geneva when it was published. He was already in exile from both France and Prussia. He doesn't seem to have been too worried about getting into trouble as he had gotten trouble with rulers repeatedly.

Updated On: 12/18/06 at 03:34 AM

It will also be broadcast on BBC4 in the UK over the Christmas period.

Which was why I originally wrote "it's perhaps a bit questionable," rather than "this is wrongheaded" or something like that. I didn't even say that I thought it was wrong, just that it could be questioned. The stuff I wrote later was merely an explanation of that point of view, since elmore had stated an opposing point of view, one that I had myself anticipated as an objection to it. A lot of it was sort of tongue-in-cheek.

But at no point did I mean to imply that I myself thought this was a bad idea.