Alfano is mainly known for having completed Turandot after Puccini's death, but he also wrote some operas of his own. This...is one of them.
As you'd expect, it's based on Edmond Rostand's play (I'd known the story, sort of, but I'd only actually seen the Steve Martin movie Roxanne). Cyrano is a soldier and a nobleman who's a talented fighter and poet but alas has a big nose. He's in love with Roxane, but unfortunately, she's in love with another cadet, Christian de Neuvillette. His general self-consciousness about his nose leads him to believe that he's ugly and that it's only natural that she'd go for the more normal-nosed Christian. Christian is also incredibly inarticulate, though, so Cyrano agrees to help him out in that regard and sends her all kinds of letters; Christian ends up by concluding that since she fell in love with him based on these letters, she's actually in love with Cyrano and he should tell her the truth. However, there's a battle and before this can happen Christian is killed. It's certainly a bit of a difficult situation. "I was secretly writing love letters to a woman on behalf of a dumb guy, and he said I should tell her the truth, but then he died. What's the least awkward way to do this?" This is a question, probably, for Dear Prudence. Welp, how he deals with this is by not saying anything as she joins a nunnery and he's her platonic friend for fifteen years until he gets brained by a log falling on him, possibly by accident and possibly as an assassination attempt, it's not really clear; anyway, she realizes the truth and says she loves him, but he dies.
NOW. It's true that this is indeed how the historical Bergerac died, and yet, that somehow fails to make it more satisfying. If you didn't know it was an actual thing, you'd assume that Rostand had just thought "hmm, this is a crackerjack tragedy, but I need a good reason for the lead character to die," and them came up with the most maladroit possible solution. The fact that that's not how it happened doesn't make it seem less...silly. He suffers a fatal yet slow-acting concussion that kills him yet allows him to be as eloquent as ever in the meantime? Okay. Sure, it's opera, things like this happen, but usually at least a little less goofily. This is on the level of Desdemona belting out a final aria after being fatally strangled. Still, looking beyond that (and if you can't look beyond things, maybe opera's not for you), I still think the plot basically works and like it a lot. One thing I found notable is the way Roxane really wants Christian to say super-passionate, romantic-sounding things to her and can't love him if he doesn't. I mean, sure. You want your lover to be passionate and eloquent. But the feeling I got here was that the opera was kind of disregarding the actually, you know, bedrock feeling that hopefully would underlie the flowery langauge and counting the language itself as everything. I don't know what to do with that insight. Maybe a bit of proto-postmodernism creeping in.
Well, and I like the music a lot, which is maybe the most important thing. Lot of good love arias from the title character--here played very effectively by Roberto Alagna with a convincing-looking artificial proboscis--as well as a quite moving one to the soldiers about their homeland (I did find this on youtube, but now I can't--I never realized until I started using a VPN how many videos are simply invisible in some territories--here it is sans subtitles). Nathalie Manfrino honestly doesn't get that much to do as Roxane, but Richard Troxell is quite good as the goofy yet ultimately tragic Christian. Anyway. Good opera. Recommended.
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