"The show was the most exquisite, challenging and enjoyable experience I have ever had."

Challenging and political as ever, Candide remains a favourite among Birmingham Opera Company audiences and performers. "The show was the most exquisite, challenging and enjoyable artistic experience I have ever had," wrote Councillor Tony Kennedy in 2003. In his five-star review for The Guardian Andrew Clements described the production as "astonishingly imaginative". Or, as someone on Facebook put it more recently "a winning combination of tanks on a beach, stoned sheep and nipple tassels."

"This is the best of all possible worlds" - so Candide is told as he lives in a Baron's remote castle. But after he steps above his station by kissing the Barons daughter  Cunegonde he's expelled from this fairytale land. Still Optimistic that the world is a wonderful place, and himself the only problem, he sets out to find perfection.
After years of separation Cunegonde and Candide find each other again and tell us that there is no perfect world- "we are neither pure nor wise or good, we'll do the best we know, we'll build our house and chop our wood and make our garden grow."

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​"He Had it Coming is a breathtaking piece of music theatre in which every detail derives from the director and company's wholehearted engagement with Mozart's masterpiece. Everyone involved in this production can count it a triumph." - Richard Bratby, Birmingham Post