Cyrano de Bergerac

Paris, 1640. Cyrano de Bergerac is a poet, a soldier of the Gascon cadets and the finest swordsman in France, who can compose a ballade while fighting a duel, but he has an enormous nose and believes no woman could love him. He loves his beautiful cousin Roxane, who loves the handsome young cadet Christian, and Christian has no gift for words. So Cyrano writes Christian's love letters for him, and even whispers the words under Roxane's balcony at night.

Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) based his hero on a real seventeenth-century writer, Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, who wrote comic fantasies about journeys to the Moon. The verse play's first night in Paris, in December 1897, was a triumph, and it remains one of the most performed of all French plays. Cyrano's speech mocking his own nose is a showpiece for actors.