Opera Company's "Cyrano' (4th review)

The play delved deeper

TOM PURDOM

In the standard English translation of Edmund Rostand’s play, the first act of Cyrano de Bergerac ends with some stirring rhetoric from the hero, as Cyrano marches off to fight a hundred men in defense of his friend Ligniere.

In the 1950 movie version, the camera follows Cyrano into the streets of Paris and we get a glimpse of the fight. A wonderful comic moment occurs when Jose Ferrer positions himself on a front step and darts from side to side, dispatching assailants with a mechanical parry and thrust, like a worker on a hyped-up assembly line.

In David DiChiera’s opera version of the first act finale, Cyrano swashbuckles into battle to the accompaniment of a rousing choral march, complete with drums and trumpets. DiChiera creates an emotional climax with music in the same way playwrights achieve their effects with language and film directors work with images.

Missed opportunities

There are two ways to approach opera. You can think of it as a series of musical numbers held together by a plot line; or you can think of it as a story told through music. By the standard of the second attitude, DiChiera’s opera is an overall success.

But DiChiera also misses some good opportunities, and one of them is critical. In the second act of Rostand’s play, Cyrano delivers a long speech in which he describes his attitude toward life. It is one of the central moments in the play, since it establishes Cyrano as a fanatical man of honor— an uncompromising individualist who refuses to bend before power and wealth, a poet who will never “write a line I have not heard in my own heart.”

A significant omission

It isn’t hard to imagine what that aria could have been like. Think of the effect a good tenor could produce when he reached Cyrano’s climactic declaration that he will stand “not high it may be— but alone!” The opera reduces the whole speech to two or three perfunctory sentences.

It’s an omission that significantly alters the nature of the story. Rostand’s Cyrano is a riveting character because he defends his personal integrity with quixotic ferocity. The love story provides a plot line, but there is more to Cyrano than his fortunes as a lover who overestimates the importance of a physical flaw.

The opera changes the emphasis. It retains some of Cyrano’s idealism, but it is, on the whole, more of a typical opera tale of star-crossed passions.

Memorable moments

To its credit, DiChiera’s Cyrano resists the modern operatic trend of refusing to indulge audiences in arias and other big musical moments. In addition to the Act I chorus, Cyrano includes a choral setting for the song of Cyrano’s regiment, a second act semi-ballet in the pastry shop with some wonderfully airy music for the women’s chorus, and Roxane’s lovely aria at the beginning of the balcony scene. The duet between Cyrano and Christian when they decide to cooperate creates a musical analog of two personalities merging to produce a perfect lover. DiChiera also uses the musical medium effectively when he has Cyrano, from his hiding place in the darkness, join Christian and Roxane as they sing their marriage vows.

And if you’re familiar with some version of Rostand’s original play, you can, of course, fill in the gaps in Cyrano’s character. If you really like the play, you will probably do so automatically. But I would have enjoyed Cyrano a lot more if DiChiera had given us more of the flamboyant rebel who stirred my adolescent soul when I first read Brian Hooker’s translation at the age of 14.



To read aresponse, click here.
To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.
To read another review by Lewis Whittington, click here.
To read another review By Steve Cohen, click here.