Musically, it integrates modern classical with American popular and jazz idioms. The work is a great choice and feels in many ways a made-to-order volley against the excesses, hypocrisy, and mayhem of our times.

It comes this season as Washington National Opera’s contribution to the Kennedy Center’s centennial birthday tribute to America’s most celebrated 20 th century composer, Leonard Bernstein. Washington National Opera’s Artistic Director Francesca Zambello imported the production from her work in 2015 at The Glimmerglass Festival. So, naturally it was a must for the mercurial appetites of a certain director who is all about developing 21 st century composers, librettists, and singers to throw out the boundaries between opera and musicals and redefine the best of all possible music-theatre. No one was quite sure where or how to produce it. Candide is one of those hybrids (opera/Broadway show) that seemed so radical and ungainly a child when it first appeared in 1953 that it shocked and raised the critical ire of many.

Paris opera pulls together