What’s more, the direction tended to be slow, with spoken text sometimes delivered in ponderous fashion and long pauses punctuating exchanges. Here, the scenario included several instances of déjà-vu, where a tale or allusion returned too many times. When Bernstein and his librettists revised the piece, they sometimes cut a number that contained information they then incorporated into an entirely different replacement piece. It overstayed its welcome by at least a half-hour, and several of the numbers (most obviously “We are Women,” but also the ensemble “What’s the Use?”) - which fell at about the time the evening needed to be ending - received such underwhelming performances that their excision would have been welcome. Of one thing I am certain in this uncertain world: a production of Candide should not run three hours (including intermission), which this one did. Epstein, the company’s senior artistic advisor. In any case, it is not what Santa Fe Opera presented, since some material from the Scottish Opera Version was deleted and different bits were grafted on from other versions of Candide, a process realized here by Matthew A. It is not my favorite among the versions, but at least it is relatively succinct, almost like a musical revue in which quite a few terrific numbers hang on the flimsiest of scenarios. Santa Fe Opera had stated that it would present the “Scottish Opera Version,” crafted for a 1988 production in Glasgow. Individual numbers came and went as he pursued his elusive goal, and each of the resultant versions has different pluses and minuses. Each of the seven versions of Candide Bernstein worked on offers a messy scenario. Directors start out from behind the eight ball in this piece.

Candide santa fe opera