Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac may not be a masterpiece, though I would claim that it is a first-rate second-rate work, to use a handy taxonomy of Richard Strauss.
Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac may not be a masterpiece, though I would claim that it is a first-rate second-rate work, to use a handy taxonomy of Richard Strauss. Yet the altogether superb production of it which the Royal Opera has mounted jointly with the Met has been received with very ill grace. It seems that no Italian composer of the early part of the 20th century can hope for a fair hearing, with even Puccini being tolerated only because it would be absurd to write off a figure so popular.
Any Italian opera written in the 18th or the first three quarters of the 19th century is assured of a respectful hearing, or more, and a critical edition executed by prestigious academics. The merest machine-made rubbish of Donizetti is recorded and lavishly presented. But if it’s Cilea, Zandonai, Giordano, above or below all Alfano, condescension and dismissive sneers are routine. He had the misfortune to be bulldozed into doing the undoable, completing the score of Turandot, which Puccini himself didn’t because it couldn’t be done, that opera having collapsed into total incoherence by its final scene. So he is like a figure in a forlorn fiction, the man who failed to rectify a genius’s big mistake.
Forget all about that, take Cyrano on its own sophisticated and individual terms, and you have a work of great charm and considerable pathos, with a last half-hour where no one need be ashamed of shedding a tear. It was an inspired choice of Placido Domingo for one of his last roles, and the Royal Opera made sure that he performed in a context worthy of his stature.
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