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Dean Bryant's production of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta leans more towards musical theatre, blending French period costumes with weak attempts at Aussie humour. 

Lydia Steier's new production of Candide is a kaleidoscopic celebration of Leonard Bernstein's varied musical idioms. 

Glimmerglass Opera Festival’s production of Candide leans heavily on a dry comedic sensibility, which most of the cast execute admirably.

Ole Anders Tandberg's edgy take on Bernstein's satirical operetta is lifted by some good performances but marred by an overpowering orchestra.

In place of a full musical, this revue highlighted classic and contemporary songs that celebrate places and cultures, although some selections seemed questionable out of context.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Kevin Newbury see Candide as a coming-of-age story, placing it in their own high-school years, specifically 1992, making Westphalia a USA knockoff.

Jane Archibald gave possibly the most dazzling account of Cunegonde's music that I’ve heard. 

Serious farce, warm-hearted sarcasm, operatic Broadway: Barrie Kosky and Komische Oper turn Bernstein's problem child into a show that thrills from start to finish.

Voltaire and Bernstein's wilful political incorrectness make Candide a challenge to behold, but the Sydney Philharmonia meets them in a concert performance in the opera house.

Jeff Clarke's characteristically high-octane style seems made for the sarcastic, hyperactive existential madness that is Candide in this little gem of a production for Iford. 

Candide is a witty satiric fable, intelligent, literary but not to a fault, and vastly entertaining. Created by a team of collaborators who fell out at different times in the work’s 52 year history – at one point or another, Lillian Hellman, Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, Dorothy Parker, Stephen Sondheim and, of course, composer Leonard Bernstein had a hand in it – it is unique in the operatic or

Though occasionally entertaining, this production was ultimately unsatisfying as a stage presentation of Bernstein’s work. 

Whether it’s half an opera, three quarters an operetta, or a musical and a half, Francesca Zambello’s team put together a production that was easy to fall in love with. 

The Staatenhaus venue forces one too many compromises on Bernstein's operetta, but the performance itself is saved by the accomplishment of much of the singing.

Alek Shrader, Judith Forst, and Tracy Dahl dazzle and amuse in Vancouver Symphony's presentation of Bernstein's operetta. 

The Bernstein operetta is a sassy summation of Voltaire’s classic in this alluring production by The Lamplighters. 

The Philhamonia Zürich’s concert of great American orchestral and song music meant a magical mix of the familiar and iconic. 

Berlin's Candide is a tour-de-force of dramatic, comic and musical brilliance.

The message of Voltaire’s novel Candide, ou l’Optimisme is that rationality and reason, rather than custom, faith or authoritative orders should determine all human activity, and although this quintessence of the Age of Enlightenment sounds self-evident nowadays, a visit to the newspaper kiosk shows us otherwise: a lot of luridly-titled guidebooks and magazines try to talk us into believing that a

First published in 1759, Voltaire’s Candide was re-imagined for the concert stage by Leonard Bernstein in 1956. An operetta whose aim was to mock the belief that everything—literally, everything—is for the best, Candide was an ideal medium through which to critique the excesses of McCarthyism and the complacency of the Eisenhower administration in 1950’s US politics.

La direction enthousiasmante de Wayne Marshall et les qualités de la distribution ne suffisent pas à compenser une mise en scène creuse, qui ne fait pas honneur à la fantaisie de l'œuvre de Bernstein.

Pour la production de ce Candide, le Capitole recevait un plateau et une équipe presque entièrement issus des milieux américains, faisant souffler dans l’enceinte du théâtre un vent de fraîcheur et de nouveauté.