Mack The Knife (original) Theatre. Abbey Theatre - Amharclann na Mainistreach. Dublin by Lamplight. Terrapin Puppet Theatre l Australia's Leading Puppet-Based Visual Theatre Company. Marionette, fantoccini. Shakespeare Library. Shakespeare and the Players. The Secret Story Of Cyrano. On the night of 28th December 1897, an ambitious but nervous young man waited in the wings of the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre, Paris, where his play, Cyrano de Bergerac , was about to be performed for the first time. Would this “heroic comedy in verse”, into which he had poured all his own youthful idealism, be a success? Edmond Rostand was a poet with a mission: he hated the materialism and cynicism of his times and saw the theatre as a place where the public could be inspired with nobler ideals and pride in their French traditions.
Although he was not yet thirty when Cyrano de Bergerac was first performed, Edmond Rostand had already tasted both success and failure. In 1894 his lighthearted version of the Romeo and Juliet story, Les Romanesques , was well received at the Comédie-Française. (This play is the basis for the popular Sixties musical, The Fantasticks .) The historical Cyrano de Bergerac was indeed an adept swordsman, besides being a poet and playwright. Tags: