Cyrano (Damrosch)

Cyrano is an opera in four acts composed by Walter Damrosch to an English language libretto by William James Henderson based on Edmond Rostand's play, Cyrano de Bergerac. It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on February 27, 1913, with Pasquale Amato in the title role and Frances Alda as Roxane.

By the time Damrosch began his Cyrano project, Rostand's play, Cyrano de Bergerac, on which the opera is based, was already well known in the United States. Its first US performance in English had taken place in New York City with Richard Mansfield in the title role in 1898, less than year after its Paris premiere. From 1900 to 1901, Constant Coquelin, who created the title role, had also toured North America performing the play in the original French with Sarah Bernhardt as Roxanne. When Damrosch decided to turn the play into an opera, he commissioned the Anglo-American critic and musicologist, William Henderson to write an English libretto. The libretto closely followed the actions and events of the play, apart from the final confrontation between Roxanne and Cyrano which takes place shortly after the battle at Arras instead of fifteen years later as in the play.

Damrosch had finished composing the opera by 1903, but its first performance opportunity did not come until ten years later. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Metropolitan Opera's General Manager from 1908 to 1935, had started a policy of producing at least one new English language opera each season. In 1911 Damrosch invited Gatti-Casazza and Arturo Toscanini to his house to hear excerpts from Cyrano, and it was chosen for the 1912/1913 season. He had revised his original score somewhat and further cuts were made to its original five-hour and half-hour running time during the rehearsal period. Shortly before the opera's opening, Edmund Rostand pronounced himself "indignant" at the liberties which Damrosch and Henderson had taken in adapting his play, particularly the ending. Rostand had never obtained copyright for the play in the United States and could not prevent adaptations there but vowed that he would never allow Damrosch's Cyrano to be performed in any country where the play had been copyrighted.

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