Candide NYC Reviews and Tickets

83%
(39 Ratings)
Positive
92%
Mixed
8%
Negative
0%
Members say
Great singing, Entertaining, Delightful, Great staging, Funny

About the Show

New York City Opera presents a new production of Leonard Bernstein's iconic musical, directed by Tony winner Harold Prince and featuring Tony winner Linda Lavin.

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Show-Score Member Reviews (39)

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133 Reviews | 37 Followers
95
Clever, Delightful, Enchanting, Great singing, Entertaining

See it if You can somehow score tickets! GLORIOUS music and performances brilliantly directed.

Don't see it if You don't like Bernstein and have no appreciation for a masterpiece.

118 Reviews | 48 Followers
95
Funny, Great singing, Great staging, Entertaining, Delightful

See it if . If you are familiar with "Candide" then you will enjoy this traditional mounting of the show. Jay Armstrong Johnson is awesome.

Don't see it if You want to see something deep or edgy Read more

401 Reviews | 65 Followers
90
Funny, Delightful, Ambitious, Entertaining

See it if City Opera came back on a high note with this slightly edited "Opera Version" of the much maligned CANDIDE. What a great cast giving all!

Don't see it if you wanted to see a simply "la la" show. Or HAMILTON.

277 Reviews | 38 Followers
90
Clever, Funny, Great singing, Dated

See it if You like the source material, Bernstein, or musical operettas (Gilbert & Sullivan, Sweeney Todd).

Don't see it if You dislike farce, pastiche, sopranos, religious criticism (albeit from an 18th century Enlightenment perspective), or orchestras. Read more

185 Reviews | 39 Followers
90
Great score, Great singing, Great staging, Enchanting

See it if Have never seen Candide and even if you have. Mr. Prince gets this one right with the exception of miscast Ms. Lavin. She drags it down.

Don't see it if Don't like whimsy or silliness used to as a vehicle for profundity. Read more

419 Reviews | 52 Followers
88
Delightful, Entertaining, Great singing, Great staging

See it if Candide in all of its glory. Social commentary, musical theater and Bernstein.

Don't see it if No reason not to.

524 Reviews | 133 Followers
86
Hal prince makes candide sparkle

See it if Best Candide yet. Prince seems to have tamed the sprawling book. Jay Armstrong Johnson is charming as Candide. The operatic leads are great.

Don't see it if Sets and costumes are splendid. The score is pure Bernstein gold, but the orchestra sounded a bit thin. Ashmaskas and Zien are hilarious.

52 Reviews | 26 Followers
85
Ambitious, Entertaining, Exquisite, Funny, Quirky

See it if you want to see the historic Hal Prince production live, love the meeting of the opera and musical theater world, and want to escape!

Don't see it if you don't like opera. Don't like gorgeous sets. Don't like silliness.

Critic Reviews (16)

The New York Times
January 9th, 2017

"With Mr. Prince’s inventive, reworked staging, some tweaks and trims and other changes, not to mention a winning cast drawn from both theater and opera, this 'Candide' represents an encouraging forward step for the reconstituted company...No production, including this one, manages completely to resolve the stylistic tensions built into 'Candide'...But Mr. Prince keeps the storytelling focused and the stage action animated, especially during some wonderfully intricate ensemble scenes."
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The Wall Street Journal
January 10th, 2017

"The numbers still speed along, and pauses for reflection go by too fast to touch the heart…Cast with a mix of opera and musical-theater performers, all amplified. For the most part, the opera singers had the edge…Prince led the orchestra in a workmanlike, rather stolid performance…The score, as always, is a masterpiece...There have been numerous rethinkings of 'Candide' in the past 35 years and this might have been an opportunity to look ahead, rather than indulge in nostalgia."
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Deadline
January 12th, 2017

"Is it opera? Musical theater? Call it what you will, 'Candide' taps gleefully into each of those disparate worlds, offering an effervescent tonic in trying times. It all but fizzes before your eyes...The production is deftly anchored by Broadway veteran Edelman...The revelation is Picerno...Choreographer Birch contributes to the elegant segues in a challenging onslaught of crowded scene changes; and Charles Prince conducts with ear and baton finely attuned to the complicated goings-on."
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AM New York
January 12th, 2017

"The score is extraordinary, but the multiple rewrites have demonstrated the difficulty of balancing the score with an episodic structure, satirical edge and political commentary...Prince's production is overstuffed and overcrowded but often entertaining. At my performance last weekend, the cast still seemed to be finding its way and much of the humor failed to land."
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Theatermania
January 10th, 2017

"This particular mounting, using designs and staging that date back more than 30 years, feels more like an ‘old warhorse’ than a piece that's truly alive…This iteration feels as though the director wasn't heavily involved. The laughs rarely land, the physical production looked shopworn, and the ensemble just looked tired. Throughout, it resembles a Broadway show in the middle of a long run, desperate for freshening up after being in the hands of associates for several months."
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BroadwayWorld
January 11th, 2017

"A rollicking production…Wheeler's much-improved book, tight as a drum for the first half, is retained...The storytelling tends to drag during the second...But happily the text is never less than witty and engaging. The terrific cast is composed of performers who not only do justice to the music, but who also get the cleverness of the lyrics and dialogue…If this sparkling mounting is any indication, New York City Opera is set to start achieving fuller grandness in 2017."
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Talkin' Broadway
January 13th, 2017

"The rift between what you feel (too little) and what you hear (too much) rapidly becomes a bug rather than a feature, with its various components waging a kind of bewildering civil war...Even so, the largely spectacular cast ensures it goes down easily...Alas, even when everything is right...a pervasive wrongness still makes its presence unavoidably felt. Prince has...done all he can to wrangle this beast, and his success at achieving that goal is obvious, even if the point of doing so isn't."
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TheaterScene.net
January 11th, 2017

"The actors try valiantly to fend for themselves with expressions ranging from mournful to bemused to goofy. Couldn't Prince or Patricia Birch on the dances have found something for them to do other than just stand there?"
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