Newsday, May 2005

"Panache" is the last word uttered by Cyrano de Bergerac in Edmond Rostand's play and Franco Alfano's opera. Usually understood as "verve" or "theatricality," it derives from terms denoting both a writer's quill and the plumes on a cavalier's hat, hinting at the self-referential sophistication of the tale of the long-nosed swordsman and poet.

That meta-theatrical fancy ripples through the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Alfano's Cyrano de Bergerac, billed as the North American premiere of this 1936 opera. Alfano is best known for completing Puccini's Turandot, though Alfano's final scene is savagely cut in most performances.

While Alfano lacked Puccini's supreme melodic flair and Debussy's ultimate sensitivity in setting poetry to music, he was an honorable craftsman who learned from both masters' use of pungent harmonies and kaleidoscopic orchestrations. Sometimes workmanlike, Cyrano nonetheless boasts moments of great beauty: a superb ballad for Cyrano, punctuated by grand, frothy flourishes; a melancholy soldiers' chorus, expressing their longing for home; and a final scene as heartrending as any in opera, whose mournful winds, weeping figures and achingly suspended harmonies evoke both autumn's fading splendor and the regret of Cyrano and Roxane's missed chance for love.

Cyrano was mounted for Plácido Domingo, whose curtain call occasioned a long, emotional ovation. It acknowledged the excellence of his portrayal and also the fact that chances to welcome new Domingo roles are not unlimited. While his future New York dates include a Tan Dun world premiere and, some whisper, the baritone lead in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, the Met stalwart, now in his 37th season with the company, admitted earlier this year that his singing days were numbered.

If so, Domingo, like the swashbuckling Cyrano, is going out in a blaze of glory. The tenor is not a convincing swordsman, and he struggled with the role's few high-lying phrases. Still, those familiar Domingo virtues—the dark and virile timbre, the ardor, the suave and poetic musicianship—were ever in evidence. What's more, he played this grateful role to the hilt, maintaining a fool's courage as Roxane confesses her love for another man, then collapsing in despair; and dying with the same stubborn, self-deprecating wit with which he had lived.

With her girlish and high-spirited Roxane, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky capped a triumphant Met season that saw her emerge as a full-fledged star. Her sound is tense, an unusual amalgam of light and dark—not a conventionally pretty instrument. But how it glows and soars during the rapturous balcony scene, and how it ripens with sorrow when she tells the dying Cyrano that each person must bear his own wound.

Raymond Very was appropriately gray and nondescript as the tongue-tied Christian, and Anthony Michaels-Moore made a dastardly De Guiche. Julien Robbins (Le Bret) and Roberto de Candia (Ragueneau) excelled in their roles. The principals' French enunciation was generally disgraceful, and Marco Armiliato conducted capably.

Francesca Zambello's deft production, with gorgeous costumes by Anita Yavich and sets by Peter J. Davison, highlights the multilayered intricacy of this work, whose hero improvises verses within verses and writes his own death. One set evokes an early theatrical design for a city scene; and the soldiers' tower in Act III recalls the Hôtel de Bourgogne's theater in Act I.

This season's remaining two performances are sold out, but Cyrano returns in 2005-06. Catch it—and Plácido Domingo—while you can.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC. Music by Franco Alfano, libretto by Henri Cain. The Metropolitan Opera, Marco Armiliato conducting. Through May 20 at Lincoln Center. Visit www.metopera.org or call 212-362-6000. Attended Friday.