In 1759, the French philosophe, playwright and satirist, Voltaire, published his Candide, a stinging indictment of the fashionable "philosophical optimism" of Leibnitz. Inspired in part by a horrible earthquake that had destroyed much of the city of Lisbon in 1755, the play describes the philosophical awakening of Candide, a young student of the savant Dr. Pangloss. After interminable (and hilarious) tribulations, Candide sheds his optimism and concludes that "to grow one’s own garden" should be the primary aim of life. Candide’s satirical rejection of boundless optimism and philosophical approaches to world problems--beloved ideals of the Age of Enlightenment--caused an understandable stir at the French court and elsewhere in Europe, and it was promptly placed in the Vatican Index of banned books. (Despite this prohibition, Candide was popular enough to warrant at least thirteen editions prior to Voltaire’s death in 1778!)
Bernstein’s Candide dates from 1950, when playwright Lillian Hellman suggested the Voltaire play as a possible subject for collaboration. His setting of Hellman’s libretto was completed six years later.
-- Kendall Briggs