Candide's Musical Mayhem

About the Event

Join Arizona Opera as we welcome Nina Bernstein Simmons, Leonard Bernstein's youngest daughter, as she guides us through the musical wit of her father's operatic masterpiece. This presenation is sure to delight and present a unique perspective on Arizona Opera's upcoming production of Candide.

“My father loved to laugh. He loved nothing better than sitting around a table with loved ones, weeping with pleasure at a well-told joke. A good joke-teller himself, he was especially good at telling musical jokes, which is to say writing music that was funny for musical reasons. By far the greatest example of this is Candide, a score brimming with wrong notes, musical puns, harmonic trap-doors, metrical madness, stylistic parody, ethnic collisions, and dark ironies... I will celebrate Candide's irresistible charms and give listeners the keys to 'getting' the jokes.”

-Nina Bernstein Simmons

Tickets are $10.00 - Reserve your seats below!

About Nina Bernstein Simmons

Nina Bernstein Simmons is Leonard Bernstein's youngest daughter. After several years working as an actress, initially at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, she turned her attention to tending her late father's legacy. In the earliest days of the internet, she worked with the Library of Congress on making the Bernstein Archives digitally available to the public. The fruits of that collaboration can be seen at the Library's American Memory website. From 2000 until 2005, Nina worked on a film about her sister, Jamie, and her remarkable journeys around the world bringing Bernstein's music and teaching legacy to new audiences. Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace premiered in Germany in December of 2005. Since 2008, Nina has been working as a food educator in underserved communities.