In France, Cyrano, 100, is Still a Nose For All Seasons

Alan Riding

Monday, Nov. 17, 1997 | 12:47 p.m.

PARIS - Poor Cyrano. Over the years, his famed proboscis has been variously portrayed as hooked, Gallic, Roman, broad, aquiline and reminiscent of a ski jump, but always large enough to invite mockery, always grotesque enough to convince him that no woman - certainly not Roxane - would ever accept him. Yet how the French love their poetry-spouting musketeer!

In the 100 years since Edmond Rostand's heroic comedy "Cyrano de Bergerac" was first performed here, Cyrano has remained unchallenged as France's most popular literary figure. Sentimental, courageous, proud, nationalistic, philosophical, irreverent, witty, compassionate and full of fine words, he is the quintessential multiple-choice French hero: everyone can find some facet of his character to identify with.

Still, the centenary of the play's premiere, on Dec. 27, 1897, has served as a good excuse for fresh ruminations about just what makes Cyrano so very French. Three different productions are under way in Paris, while a special exhibition at the Theatre de Chaillot is presenting posters, photographs, manuscripts and costumes from this century's best-known productions.

The play's plot is fairly universal. Cyrano loves his cousin, Roxane, who in turn loves a handsome but less than eloquent fellow musketeer, Christian de Neuvillette. All too conscious of his appearance, Cyrano expresses his love for Roxane by providing Christian with the verses that woo her. Then, when Christian dies in battle, Roxane retreats to a convent. There, 15 years later, with a mortally wounded Cyrano by her side, she finally discovers that she had been besmitten by his, not Christian's, words of love.

The story's appeal has also gone beyond France. In New York, it was recycled as an opera in 1913 and as a jazz musical in 1932. Michael Gordon's 1950 film version won Jose Ferrer an Academy Award for best actor, while Steve Martin starred in Fred Schepisi's 1987 Americanized update, "Roxanne."

And the play itself keeps being staged abroad. Frank Langella is directing and starring in his own adaptation, which opens Nov. 23 at the Roundabout Theater on Broadway.

Yet from the premiere, with Rostand himself standing among the extras in the first act to make sure things went smoothly, the French have embraced "Cyrano de Bergerac" as their own. The record shows that on the opening night the author and the cast, headed by Constant Coquelin as Cyrano, were given 40 curtain calls. Ten days later, Rostand was awarded the Legion d'Honneur. As a hero, he was overshadowed only by Cyrano.

The playwright was surprised by the reception. "Neither Coquelin nor any of the actors was expecting a success, and I too was very depressed because the doubts and fears of the others had infected me," he later recalled. Rostand would go on to write two more successful plays, "L'Aiglon" in 1900 and "Chantecler" in 1910, but it was "Cyrano de Bergerac" that won him a seat in the Academie Francaise in 1913.

He based the play on the life of Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a 17th-century army-officer-turned-playwright who claimed that he had been plagiarized by no less than Moliere and who was infamous for dueling with anyone who remarked on his prominent nose. Set in the glory-packed days of Louis XIV, the play offered a welcome dose of patriotic nostalgia to a France that was still nursing its wounds after its defeat by Germany in 1870.

But it would always be interpreted to suit the moment. In 1897, France was bitterly divided over the case of a Jewish army officer, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, who was wrongly accused of being a German spy. Xenophobic anti-Dreyfusards saw the play as a paean to French nationalism, while Rostand himself sympathized with Dreyfus. Years later, recalling how Cyrano led his Cadets de Gascogne in the Battle of Arras, one French writer hailed the "intrepid soldiers" who defeated Germany in 1918 as "Cyrano's generation." Cyrano was presented as a pacifist in the 1930s, as a symbol of national unity during Germany's wartime occupation and as a Gaullist after the war.

"Everyone can claim Cyrano because he is totally French," said Jerome Savary, who is directing "Cyrano de Bergerac" at the Theatre de Chaillot. "The right, because he defends the country right or wrong; the left, because Cyrano defends the poor; anarchists, because he is one of them; the proper, because he is chaste; romantics, because he makes them cry and the sarcastic, because he attacks hypocrisy."

Nowadays, Cyrano is also interpreted psychologically. "Cyrano must resemble us for him to affect us so much," said Francis Huster, the 50-year-old actor who is playing Cyrano oppose Cristiana Reali's Roxane in Savary's production. "The words that come to mind are glory, panache, love, death, but these are also the colors of the soul, the solitude, the despair" that "dominate Rostand's play."

Jean-Paul Belmondo, who played Cyrano on stage seven years ago, had a somewhat blunter explanation. "Cyrano represents the Frenchman because he likes to promote himself, because he has panache, because he is a bit flashy," the actor said. "But even when he says, 'I have failed in everything,' he never cries over his own fate. He leaves everyone crying, but he is not full of self-pity."

Along with its swashbuckling scenes, the rich language of the play, written in alexandrine verses and ranging freely between the bombastic, the farcical and the moving, continues to appeal. It is evocative of Moliere, yet full of late 19th-century mischief. So familiar is the play to many of the French that they return to it as they might to a favorite opera, applauding Cyrano's most virtuoso speeches as they would a great aria.

Still, forced to read daily in newspapers that they are experiencing another crisis of confidence, perhaps the French are riper than usual for a fresh dose of Cyrano's bravura. He is, after all, a hero for all seasons, a Charles de Gaulle and Asterix wrapped in one. Of Rostand, Andre Gide once wrote snidely: "Every public has the Shakespeare it deserves." Today, all three Paris productions of "Cyrano de Bergerac" are playing to full houses. Shakespeare would have liked that.