Stay in the Loop
BSR publishes on a weekly schedule, with an email newsletter every Wednesday and Thursday morning. There’s no paywall, and subscribing is always free.
Opera Company's "Cyrano' (3rd review)
Steve Cohen
The charm of a new old-fashioned opera
STEVE COHEN
I've occasionally daydreamed that a modern composer would write an opera in the mode of Mozart or with the vigor of Verdi. He would apply those styles to contemporary subjects like, say, the conflict between Ronald Reagan and his daughter Patti while the Soviet empire totters, with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall set to music like the auto-da-fe from Don Carlos. Grand passions sung in a grand style that today’s composers lack.
In my more rational moments I realized that this would be impossible. But David DiChiera, director of the Michigan Opera Theater, was more daring than I. He possessed the tenacity and resources to put his composing debut on stage with an intentionally old-fashioned setting of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Some may call this a stunt, but I came to it with an unbiased curiosity.
DiChiera and his librettist, the stage director Bernard Uzan, have taken a story from the past, set it within its own period and used a musical palette from that same time. It’s not a copy of any one man’s music but an amalgam of 19th-Century French styles. Nothing in this opera sounds as modern as Debussy or Milhaud— although the palettes of those turn-of-the-20th-Century Frenchmen would be more suited for the subject DiChiera chose, because the tale of Cyrano is sad and sweet, with episodes of wit, as opposed to the intense drama of a Carmen or Faust.
The result is a charming opera. The word charming is rarely used today. It’s as obsolescent as the style of this piece. Nor do we see many operas that stretch across three acts with two intermissions. (Even five-act classics are presented with only a single intermission in these days of cost-cutting, union rules and suburban audiences with long commutes home.) So the whole enterprise is pleasantly out-of-date. Attending Cyrano is like time traveling to another world. Relax and approach this the way our grandparents did when they attended operas by Ambroise Thomas or Jules Massenet.
The critics panned Andrea Chenier too
DiChiera’s music is pleasantly melodic but not immediately memorable. Often the vocal line rises and falls uneventfully while the orchestra carries the burden. But verismo composers a century ago were excoriated for the same thing. Reviews of Andrea Chenier complained that Giordano refused to write melodies for the singers. Then came revivals of that work where vocalists like Del Monaco, Corelli, Warren, Milanov and Tebaldi found plenty of singable melodies in it.
Cyrano’s best moments, musically, are a big aria for Roxane in her garden at the start of Act II and Cyrano’s last-act recitation, from memory, of the love letter he sent to Roxane 14 years earlier. Act I ends with a tuneful duet for the two friends, Cyrano and Christian, which evokes memories of the Don Carlos duet, "Dieu, tu semas dans nos âmes," even if DiChiera never sounds as catchy as Verdi.
Mark Flint’s orchestrations are cleverly evolved, but he seems too enamored of trumpet leads. I would have preferred more woodwinds and strings.
The protagonist: Something’s missing
Marian Pop plays Cyrano appealingly and sympathetically. His voice is a high, bright baritone that works particularly well in the balcony scene where he impersonates Christian, who is a tenor. But something’s missing in the writing and/or direction, because this Cyrano never dazzles us with his panache nor his wit as José Ferrer does in the 1950 film.
Evelyn Pollock, a 2007 alum from the Academy of Vocal Arts, sounded wonderful as Roxane on the Wednesday night when I heard her. Her blonde appearance is beautiful, and she floats the many soft high notes of her aria with nicely covered tones, going all the way up to several high C’s and one high D. Stephen Costello, the 2007 AVA graduate who now sings at the Metropolitan Opera, looks handsome and youthful and sings lyrically, which is all that his role calls for. His character of Christian is not a fully rounded person. He must (and does) look like a leading man but not be one, because the focus of the piece is on the other man, the fellow with the long nose.
The sets of this Cyrano are exceptionally impressive: old-fashioned, towering, and perfectly suited to the concept.
The faux French connection
It may seem strange that an American composer and American librettist have written an opera in French. They, of course, are re-working a French play. This reminds me of the 1937 movie, Maytime, in which the young Robert Wright and George Forrest were instructed by M-G-M to pick some public-domain music and turn it into an opera duet for Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. They selected something Russian because a Slavic hat and collar would look good on MacDonald, re-wrote Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with their own English words and then saw it translated into French because the screenplay was set in France.
When Wright and Forrest told me the details of this, in 1998, they laughed about the silliness of it. A similar, bemused outlook is best when attending Cyrano. Don’t expect a masterpiece and you’ll have a good time.
To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.
To read another review by Lewis Whittington, click here.
To read another review by Tom Purdom, click here.
STEVE COHEN
I've occasionally daydreamed that a modern composer would write an opera in the mode of Mozart or with the vigor of Verdi. He would apply those styles to contemporary subjects like, say, the conflict between Ronald Reagan and his daughter Patti while the Soviet empire totters, with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall set to music like the auto-da-fe from Don Carlos. Grand passions sung in a grand style that today’s composers lack.
In my more rational moments I realized that this would be impossible. But David DiChiera, director of the Michigan Opera Theater, was more daring than I. He possessed the tenacity and resources to put his composing debut on stage with an intentionally old-fashioned setting of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Some may call this a stunt, but I came to it with an unbiased curiosity.
DiChiera and his librettist, the stage director Bernard Uzan, have taken a story from the past, set it within its own period and used a musical palette from that same time. It’s not a copy of any one man’s music but an amalgam of 19th-Century French styles. Nothing in this opera sounds as modern as Debussy or Milhaud— although the palettes of those turn-of-the-20th-Century Frenchmen would be more suited for the subject DiChiera chose, because the tale of Cyrano is sad and sweet, with episodes of wit, as opposed to the intense drama of a Carmen or Faust.
The result is a charming opera. The word charming is rarely used today. It’s as obsolescent as the style of this piece. Nor do we see many operas that stretch across three acts with two intermissions. (Even five-act classics are presented with only a single intermission in these days of cost-cutting, union rules and suburban audiences with long commutes home.) So the whole enterprise is pleasantly out-of-date. Attending Cyrano is like time traveling to another world. Relax and approach this the way our grandparents did when they attended operas by Ambroise Thomas or Jules Massenet.
The critics panned Andrea Chenier too
DiChiera’s music is pleasantly melodic but not immediately memorable. Often the vocal line rises and falls uneventfully while the orchestra carries the burden. But verismo composers a century ago were excoriated for the same thing. Reviews of Andrea Chenier complained that Giordano refused to write melodies for the singers. Then came revivals of that work where vocalists like Del Monaco, Corelli, Warren, Milanov and Tebaldi found plenty of singable melodies in it.
Cyrano’s best moments, musically, are a big aria for Roxane in her garden at the start of Act II and Cyrano’s last-act recitation, from memory, of the love letter he sent to Roxane 14 years earlier. Act I ends with a tuneful duet for the two friends, Cyrano and Christian, which evokes memories of the Don Carlos duet, "Dieu, tu semas dans nos âmes," even if DiChiera never sounds as catchy as Verdi.
Mark Flint’s orchestrations are cleverly evolved, but he seems too enamored of trumpet leads. I would have preferred more woodwinds and strings.
The protagonist: Something’s missing
Marian Pop plays Cyrano appealingly and sympathetically. His voice is a high, bright baritone that works particularly well in the balcony scene where he impersonates Christian, who is a tenor. But something’s missing in the writing and/or direction, because this Cyrano never dazzles us with his panache nor his wit as José Ferrer does in the 1950 film.
Evelyn Pollock, a 2007 alum from the Academy of Vocal Arts, sounded wonderful as Roxane on the Wednesday night when I heard her. Her blonde appearance is beautiful, and she floats the many soft high notes of her aria with nicely covered tones, going all the way up to several high C’s and one high D. Stephen Costello, the 2007 AVA graduate who now sings at the Metropolitan Opera, looks handsome and youthful and sings lyrically, which is all that his role calls for. His character of Christian is not a fully rounded person. He must (and does) look like a leading man but not be one, because the focus of the piece is on the other man, the fellow with the long nose.
The sets of this Cyrano are exceptionally impressive: old-fashioned, towering, and perfectly suited to the concept.
The faux French connection
It may seem strange that an American composer and American librettist have written an opera in French. They, of course, are re-working a French play. This reminds me of the 1937 movie, Maytime, in which the young Robert Wright and George Forrest were instructed by M-G-M to pick some public-domain music and turn it into an opera duet for Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. They selected something Russian because a Slavic hat and collar would look good on MacDonald, re-wrote Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with their own English words and then saw it translated into French because the screenplay was set in France.
When Wright and Forrest told me the details of this, in 1998, they laughed about the silliness of it. A similar, bemused outlook is best when attending Cyrano. Don’t expect a masterpiece and you’ll have a good time.
To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.
To read another review by Lewis Whittington, click here.
To read another review by Tom Purdom, click here.
Sign up for our newsletter
All of the week's new articles, all in one place. Sign up for the free weekly BSR newsletters, and don't miss a conversation.
