While best known today for having composed the ending to Puccini's unfinished Turandot, Franco Alfano wrote some dozen operas, including Cyrano de Bergerac (1936) with a libretto by Henri Cain based on Edmond Rostand's drama of the same name. It is a moving tale of romantic misunderstanding, swashbuckling bravado and heartbreaking loyalty, in which the eloquent Cyrano feels unable to express his love for Roxane because of his famously protuberant nose--except on behalf of his handsome but inarticulate friend, Christian.
Director: Tiziano Mancini
Conductor: Patrick Fournillier
Stars: Plácido Domingo, Sondra Radvanovsky, Arturo Chacón-Cruz.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1329126/
Premiere 1936 (in Italian), Rome
Alfano originally set the text in French, which is how it's performed in this video.
The Rostrand play opens in Paris, 1640. (I have not found this information for the Alfano opera.)
This is my second Alfano: Cyrano, the first being Alfano: Cyrano de Bergerac (2005), 9 with R.Alagno as C, and his brothers doing the production design/direction. They managed to mine more comedy from the script, and RA had more swash in his buckle. PD is dignified and hurt, singing and acting splendidly as always. But with RA you get the extra pleasure of a native speaker singing in French. RA's nose was less extreme, but neither was rendered ugly by the prosthetic, as Cyrano describes himself.
Audio is less than ideal, with the singers sounding far from the mics, but perhaps normal for recorded onstage in 2008.
I like the story a lot, and wish other composers had done this, or done it well enough that we have performances available. I don't find any other Cyrano opera on Amazon,
This opera house is in Valencia, Spain.
ValencianaOpera, cond. Fournillier; 8-
