Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- For the first time since its premiere in 1956, the Parisians have the opportunity to see ``Candide,'' Leonard Bernstein's ``comic operetta,'' based on French philosopher Voltaire's 1759 satire. They love it.

The work has a checkered history. The original Broadway production was a flop. Although the most daring scene -- a send-up of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, disguised as an auto da fe of heretics -- had been cut, the production closed after 73 performances. The audience then was in no mood to swallow the message that they weren't living in ``the best of all possible worlds.''

The 1974 revival with a new book by Hugh Wheeler, introducing Voltaire as a character, fared better. With the Vietnam disaster in recent memory, Voltaire's scorn for faith- based optimism fell on open ears. Hal Prince's innovative staging ran for 740 performances and became the model for subsequent productions.

Now, there's yet another version. Canadian director Robert Carsen and British dramaturge Ian Burton have ``freely adapted'' Wheeler's book, adding up-to-date jokes and quite a few from Voltaire's original. The philosopher speaks French, the rest of the cast speaks and sings in English.

JFK and Jackie

The tone is set during the jolly overture. The curtain turns into a huge television screen with cheerful paragons of the American way of life in the 1950s and early 1960s: Families are relentlessly happy, cars get bigger and bigger, JFK and Jackie hold court in Camelot.

TV, which came into its own at the time, is the metaphor that holds the show together. Bernstein's rapid scene changes are presented as zapping from one channel to the next, with the difference that, instead of traveling from Westphalia to Lisbon to Buenos Aires and so on, we stay in the U.S.

The castle in ``West Failure'' looks like the White House, get-rich-quick Eldorado becomes oil-rich Texas, the gaming paradise is transferred from Venice to Las Vegas and Cunegonde sells her charms in Hollywood instead of Paris.

The sinking of the ``Titanic'' doesn't quite fit into the overall concept, but never mind.

At one point, George W. Bush has a beach party with Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi and Vladimir Putin, after which Putin -- pronounced ``putain'' (whore) -- dies: His champagne has been poisoned.

The colorful set (Michael Levine) and the costumes (Buki Shiff) are the show's trump cards.

Squeaky Cunegonde

The singing is OK, though nothing to shout about. William Burden in the title role of the eternal schoolboy is sweet and bland. Anna Christy, his beloved Cunegonde, is on the squeaky side yet offers a funny parody of Marguerite's Jewel Song (``Glitter and Be Gay'').

Kim Criswell, the Old Lady who has lost one buttock and survived many more calamities, is the most experienced Broadway singer onstage, and it shows.

French actor Lambert Wilson, perfectly bilingual, is a worldly wise, bewigged Voltaire and then switches into English, playing Pangloss, Candide's pathologically upbeat tutor, and his opposite number, the pessimist Martin.

John Axelrod conducts the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris.

At the end, the curtain turns into a TV screen again, showing images of cut-down forests, stinking smoke-stacks and refugees in the desert, while the whole cast is proclaiming Voltaire's credo: Although the world is far from perfect, you should ``cultivate your garden.''

``Candide,'' which is sponsored by Credit Agricole SA, is in repertory at the Theatre du Chatelet, Paris, through Dec. 31. From June 20 to July 18, 2007, the production will be at La Scala, Milan.

(Jorg von Uthmann is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Jorg von Uthmann at uthmann@wanadoo.fr.

Last Updated: December 14, 2006 00:02 EST