November 14, 2022
By Albert Garih
When I was 11 years old, my sisters took me to the Comédie Française to see Cyrano de Bergerac. It was the first time I went to a theater, and I had no idea what the play was about. I was immediately sold on the theater and on Cyrano, a man with a long nose, not handsome, not so particular about how he dressed, but, as he says to this vain interlocutor who has the nerve to provoke him by telling him that he has a long nose, “Me, it is morally that I have my elegance.” The whole play is about how he is morally elegant, almost heroic when Roxane, his cousin, the lady with whom he is so deeply in love, tells him that she is in love with someone else. Instead of behaving like a jealous, dismissed lover, he pairs with his rival and, together, they work towards making Roxane fall in love with “their” eloquence. That night at the theater, Cyrano became my hero, a role model I would try to emulate all my life, trying to make the best of a disillusion.
One or two years later, at a Boy Scout summer camp, I staged the scene of the duel with another guy and, of course, I was Cyrano. This character has followed me my whole life as a role model. I have seen the play countless times, even at the Kennedy Center with Derek Jacobi in the role of Cyrano, and of course, the movie with José Ferrer, of which I have a cassette. I also have the book that I take out of my bookcase every once in a while.
That was my first theatrical experience, and to this day, although I have seen some of the greatest actors on stage—Sir Laurence Olivier in Rhinoceros by Ionesco, Sir Alec Guinness as Lawrence of Arabia a couple of years before the movie came out, and others including the duo of Burton and Taylor at the Kennedy Center, that first performance of Cyrano at the Comédie-Française remains unmatched for me.
© 2022, Albert Garih. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this website are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.
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