West Side Story may be Leonard Bernstein’s best-known work, but the overture to Candide is the composer personified in every note. It crystallizes the action of what follows − the seldom-performed comic operetta − a rare gem that launches Opera Tampa's 2025 season.
Based on the once-banned French satire by Voltaire, Candide is the story of a young man under the thrall of Leibniz’s philosophy of optimism and his disillusionment with life’s hardships. In his coming-of-age parody, Voltaire drives home the point that evil serves no purpose and positivity is absurd.
In this original, first-time production, singers will dress in 18th-century elegance as they traverse Bernstein’s deliciously modern score from 1956. With this witty music, the composer jostles the ambiguities of Voltaire’s novel and asks how our “capacity for laughter is nobler than our divine gift of suffering.’’
You can see Candide at the Straz Center’s Ferguson Hall on January 31 and February 2. Tickets start at $50 and may be purchased online at StrazCenter.org, or by calling 813-229-STAR (7827)
