‘Candide’ Soars . . . and Stumbles : Opera review: Leonard Bernstein’s songs are still inventive, catchy, spicy, endearing--and too much of a good thing.

Oh, “Candide.” Poor “Candide.”

In the beginning there was Gordon Davidson’s brave, clever and sprightly little production for the Theater Group--it wasn’t the Center Theater Group yet--at UCLA in 1966.

Here, the lumbering Broadway musical, which had flopped a decade earlier, emerged perfectly focused, perfectly wicked and witty. Bernstein’s music bubbled and bristled, as needed. The watered-down Voltaire libretto retained as much of its edgy satire as the sometimes sappy composer would permit.

And, quite incidentally, Carroll O’Connor, then a little-known, low-budget character actor, did some pre-Bunker bumbling as the eternal optimist and eternal pessimist in residence.

Still, the show--call it an opera, an operetta, a musical comedy; call it whatever you like--remained a victim of its libretto, a thick broth spoiled by many too many talented chefs. This became all the more clear in a bloated Civic Light Opera edition, which showed up at the Music Center five years later.

Hal Prince pruned the piece down to a lean and lusty 90 minutes for a brilliant and drastic revision that played Broadway, both on and off, in 1973. Then, nearly a decade later, he turned to the other cheeky extreme for an extended leaden laff-riot at the New York City Opera. It eventually made its cumbersome way to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as well as the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

And now, traveling full circle, Gordon Davidson’s original “Candide”--or an unreasonable facsimile thereof--is back. It’s back in a lavish, splashy, broad and smirky production at the recently renovated Ahmanson Theatre. The black-tie crowd at the gala opening on Wednesday greeted and treated it with cheers worthy of a second coming.

But, the inevitable cliche query looms. Is this the best of all possible “Candides”?

Well. . . .

It does have Constance Hauman--happily remembered as a daredevilish Zerbinetta in Long Beach--as an irresistibly glittery and indomitably gay Cunegonde. This noble wenchette sustains purity amid rape and raunch and ruin. This wide-eyed innocent tippy-toes daintily through numerous hostile worlds with a perfect snicker and pearly tones that blossom in the coloratura stratosphere. Forget the baby Barbara Cook. Forget the glamorous Mary Costa. This is the real sexy-and-selfless-little-me bravura thing.

The new “Candide” also can boast a terrific new Candide in Kenn Chester, last noticed playing Beppe to Pavarotti’s Canio in a televised “Pagliacci” from the Met. As Bernstein’s reincarnation of L’il Abner, the tenorino is dauntlessly boyish, sweetly lyrical, magnificently stupid. He even knows how to float a high pianissimo to signal deep introspection.

*

Nancy Dussault, who not long ago was a savvy soubrette and endearing ingenue, turns up here as the eminently practical Old Lady with the strange Slavic accent and compromised posterior. She isn’t particularly old. She cannot emulate Irra Petina’s chest tones. In this version, she doesn’t even get to utter the deathless plaint about being “homesick for any place but here.” But she is spunky and sporty, silly and smart. It is more than enough.

The busy, well-chosen supporting cast is dominated by a would-be Heldentenor named Roland Rusinek as a Governor capable of a really stentorian ring. Peter Wexler’s quasi-unit set, a modification of his 1966 effort, frames and propels the action with picturesque invention. Yehuda Hyman’s farcical choreography springs neatly from the action, as does David Craig’s “vocal staging,” whatever that may be. The chorus is fine.

But. . . .

Now that Bernstein has been canonized, no one dares leave much of his work on the cutting-room floor. The current production, based, it clumsily says here, on “the Scottish Opera Edition of the Opera House Version,” rambles on and on and on. The songs are inventive, catchy, spicy, endearing--up to if not including the suddenly mawkish anti-Voltairean finale. Too bad there are too many of them.

Lasting a long three hours, the show begins to sprawl just when it should begin to soar. Every note may indeed be a masterpiece, but that doesn’t mean the retention of every note--well, nearly every note--reinforces the dramatic structure.

*

Davidson’s direction evolves in nifty strokes of stylistic mockery and genre caricature. One would like to see him cast an irreverent glance at Gilbert and Sullivan or Offenbach. In this “Candide,” however, the satirical souffle threatens to deflate as the songs begin to become repetitive and the jokes begin to unwind.

William Schallert dodders pleasantly as a faintly Germanic Dr. Pangloss, pales as a muted Martin. One applauds his penchant for understatement at both extremes of Weltanschauung . Still, one longs for comic impulses a bit more cynical and crusty.

The scrappy 22-piece orchestra in the pit plays with plenty of pizazz for Lucas Richman. Unfortunately, the infernal microphones (“Sound,” it says here, “by Jon Gottlieb”) make the band sound raucous, not rich. And therein lies a major rub.

When “Candide” played the 3,200-seat Pavilion, across the plaza, no amplification was needed. In the intimately revamped Ahmanson, reduced for this run to a mere 1,600 seats, everyone uses body mikes. Make that head mikes. The singers wear their amplification in their hair. The result doesn’t look pretty, and it certainly doesn’t sound pretty.

At least Davidson & Co. let us get away without supertitles. Life is happiness indeed.