Cyrano von Bergerac

A recording from the Burgtheater in 2000

When she was still a young girl, Cyrano had fallen in love with his cousin Roxane. And she, too, had been smitten with him whenever he visited her in her rural seclusion and told her of his heroic deeds. Now that she has grown up and blossomed, she has come to Paris and wants to meet him. He harbors the wildest hopes, yet cannot believe it. For he has one flaw: a nose as big as his talent as a fencer and poet. She, too, is in love—but with someone else—and he, Cyrano, is to serve as her go-between. Grinding his teeth, he agrees, but runs into a problem: Roxane is a snob who revels in flowery language, while her beloved, as handsome as he is, has little talent for elegant phrasing. Cyrano and the young man strike a pact: the poet lends the young man his soul, and the handsome one lends the plain one his body. Two become one, one becomes two, and both court Roxane.