Oakland Symphony delivers a grand “Candide”

The best of all possible worlds? The Paramount Theater, Oakland’s restored Art Deco palace, was filled last Friday with fantastical music and absurdist theater in Leonard Bernstein’s satirical masterpiece, Candide. Based on Voltaire’s heady romp and critique of society, it poses a philosophical nut and then blasts away at it. But that philosophical debate is accomplished with such infectious melodies and pin-turn plot twists that it...

Continue reading