Opera Review: The Unknown Nose

The Met ends its season with Cyrano de Bergerac.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The rapier wit: Roberto Alagna as Cyrano de Bergerac.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2017 the Metropolitan Opera.

In the closing month of the Metropolitan Opera season, the company's renaissance of French opera is in full swing. The reason: the company's first revival of its 2005 production of Cyrano de Bergerac, with Roberto Alagna as the swashbuckling swordsman whose enormous nose arrives 15 minutes before he does. Mr. Alagna is a proven star, but Cyrano is an unknown opera. Written by Franco Alfano (himself best remembered as the unlucky soul assigned to complete Puccini's Turandot) it had the misfortune to debut in 1936, as the clouds of World War II gathered and people didn't seem that interested in opera.