When David Walton returns to Fort Lauderdale to sing the title role of “Candide” with the South Florida Symphony Orchestra in January, he comes with indelible memories of his first trip here as a college freshman 15 years ago.
“I traveled with friends to Fort Lauderdale for spring break,” says the tenor, now a Minnesota resident looking forward to his extended winter engagement in South Florida. “We chartered a boat from there and deep-sea fished down off the Keys. It was my first and only deep-sea fishing experience — and it was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
A less impactful memory from the trip involves an entirely different kind of boat. “We took the Jungle Queen riverboat tour. We went by the county jail, which was a pink building and really nice.” He recalls thinking, “‘Ok, this is how Florida runs there.”
Walton’s many subsequent travels, now as an in-demand concert and operatic performer, may inform his characterization of the well-traveled hero of the Voltaire novella adapted in 1956 by Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic. For its Masterworks II series, the South Florida Symphony premieres the “semi-staged concert” version of the operetta Thursday, Jan. 16 at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale. Other performances are Tuesday, Jan. 14 in Miami Beach, and Sunday, Jan. 19 in Key West.
“It’s called the ‘semi-staged’ version, but it’s fully staged,” says SFSO founder and music director Sebrina María Alfonso. “We have a stage director, stage managers, lighting directors. We’re having the props, the costumes. We have everything except the big sets.”
Though Alfonso hasn’t previously conducted “Candide,” she’s familiar with the music.
“I’ve performed many of the songs from the operetta in pops concerts, and I love the songs. They’re fun. They’re familiar to the audience and can really show off the voice.”
The SFSO production owes its inception to the PBS “Great Performances” broadcast of a 2004 semi-staged “Candide” with the New York Philharmonic, starring Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone.
“I happened to see the video of the production,” says Alfonso, “and I just thought it was such a brilliant show. I especially loved this version, which was put together by the director, Lonny Price. It just felt like something that this community should see.”
The text, which is in English, also holds considerable appeal for the conductor. “It’s just non-stop fun,” she says. “It’s just crazy. These people are making trips around the globe, and they get killed each time, and then they come back to life, and you see them in all these different situations and countries having all these experiences.”
Alfonso’s only previous operatic production with the orchestra was “Porgy and Bess” in 2019. “Candide” is quite the departure.
“It’s quite satirical,” she says. “We’re definitely in a time and place where we had to tone down some of the texts because it’s just a different world. They said the things that all of us squirm when we hear now. I wanted to be true to the score, but you just can’t. Times have changed.”
Based on an 18th century novella and a 1950s operetta, Alfonso says the highly satirical text may not meet the politically correct standards of the 2020s.
“Dan Wallace Miller, the stage director, did the text in a way that the implications are there. It’s just toned down. Because every ethnic group, every religious group, everyone is made fun of.”
Inhabiting the character of Candide comes with its own complexities for tenor Walton, who debuted the role last summer at the Northern Lights Music Festival in Minnesota.
“It’s a completely different emotional response from me than most of the roles I do, which are bel canto Italian roles where I play the romantic lead. But Candide takes a more serious turn with some of these themes that Voltaire gives us. There’s lots of anger. There’s a lot of confusion. There’s a sense of isolation and hopelessness. And the most difficult thing about the role as a tenor is going to that emotional state, because it can kind of be a dark place. The music gets heavier, but I need to feel heavier. That’s the challenging part.”
The challenging role was not his first encounter with the genius of Bernstein, however. That came as a graduate student at the University of Mississippi, when he sang a solo of “A Simple Song” in a performance of the maestro’s “Mass.” His son, Alexander Bernstein, was a presenter at the concert and, as Walton recalls it, he related a memory of his father that has to be one of the great tiki bar moment of all time.
“He said the two greatest performances he couId remember his dad doing were conducting JFK’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral — and playing “Rhapsody in Blue” at a tiki bar in the Caribbean. They were on vacation and it was late at night, and his dad just walked over to a piano and played it from memory. He said it was one of the greatest things he’d ever seen his dad do.”
Walton is one of the rare tenors who is also a guitar player, and an electric guitar at that.
“Guitar was my first love,” he says. “Now it’s definitely a secondary instrument for me, but I do love getting to play every now and then. I play electric guitar, but primarily in my work I get to play my classical guitar.”
The singer is as at home on the concert stage as he is performing opera. “I love both,” he says. “I do both very frequently. Opera takes me to a different place. I love the intimacy I get with the instrumentalists on stage. So I’m really looking forward to getting the best of both worlds with the South Florida Symphony Orchestra, going to that dramatic place yet also having that intimate collaboration with the instrumentalists.”
It’s a robust cast of collaborators that SFSO is providing him.
“There are six major cast members, a ton of smaller roles, 24 choristers and a full orchestra of about 50 pieces,” says conductor Alfonso.
A distinction of the semi-staged production is that the orchestra is on stage throughout the performance, as it was for “Porgy and Bess.” “And people loved it,” Alfonso says. “They really enjoyed really seeing the communication between the orchestra and the singers.”
Elevating the orchestra out of the pit is only one of the challenges posed by a production being staged in three venues whose seating capacities range from 500 in Key West to 2,700 in Fort Lauderdale and whose addresses span 200 miles.
“So you’re setting it up three times and breaking it down three times,” says Alfonso. “The challenge is we have to build everything around the smallest stage and add what we have to add for each area we go to. Of course, it costs more but this is where we perform, so we have to provide each of these communities with this.”
In confronting the difficulties inherent in such a production, the conductor is quick to credit the involvement of Susan Danis, former general director of Florida Grand Opera.
“She’s been a lifesaver,” says Alfonso. “She is consulting and really overseeing the whole production. I’ve known her for years. And when I heard that she left FGO, I called her and said, ‘I know what I know, but I don’t know what I don’t know. And so I know that I need you.’”
Alfonso envisions the collaboration as more than a one-off. “We’re trying to figure out how to make this grow — not just doing operas that are well-known but also other small operas, like Mozart’s ‘Cosi Fan Tutte,’ that are not done often but that we feel are worthy.”
And shows like “Candide,” says Alfosno.
“When I first started this, I just thought everybody knew ‘Candide,’ so it’s been very shocking to us to realize that it’s really not performed often, and that a lot of people don’t know it. They don’t know that they do know it, because they do know the songs. But the show is so rarely done, so we’re just trying to get a real buzz out there.”
IF YOU GO
WHAT :
South Florida Symphony’s Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide”
WHERE:
Au-Rene Theater, Broward Center, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
WHEN:
7:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 16.
COST:
$50, $75, $95, $115, $195
INFORMATION:
(954) 462-0222;
southfloridasymphony.org
