page_title: Cyrano de Bergerac (play)
section_title: Stage history
hierarchical_section_title: Cyrano de Bergerac (play) / Stage history
caption_attribution_description: English: Benoît-Constant Coquelin (Coquelin aîné), actor, at the first performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, from the same-named play, by Edmond Rostand, 27 december 1897, théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin. Français&#160;: Benoît-Constant Coquelin (Coquelin aîné), en Cyrano de Bergerac, à la première de la pièce du même nom, d' Edmond Rostand, le 27 décembre 1897 au théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin.
context_page_description: Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. There was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, and the play is a fictionalisation following the broad outlines of his life.
  The entire play is written in verse, in rhyming couplets of twelve syllables per line, very close to the classical alexandrine form, but the verses sometimes lack a caesura. It is also meticulously researched, down to the names of the members of the Académie française and the dames précieuses glimpsed before the performance in the first scene.
  The play has been translated and performed many times, and is responsible for introducing the word "panache" into the English language. Cyrano is in fact famed for his panache, and he himself makes reference to "my panache" in the play. The two most famous English translations are those by Brian Hooker and Anthony Burgess.
context_section_description: On 27 December 1897, the curtain rose at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, and the audience was pleasantly surprised. A full hour after the curtain fell, the audience was still applauding. The original Cyrano was Constant Coquelin, who played it over 410 times at said theatre and later toured North America in the role. The original production had sets designed by Marcel Jambon and his associates Brard and Alexandre Bailly (Acts I, III and V), Eugène Carpezat (Act II), and Alfred Lemeunier (Act IV). The earliest touring production of Cyrano was set up by Charles Moncharmont and Maurice Luguet. It was premiered in Monte Carlo on 29 March 1898, and subsequently presented in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Algeria, Tunisia and Spain. Special, transportable sets emulating the Parisian production were created for this tour by Albert Dubosq:
  La troupe qui interprétera Cyrano de Bergerac se composera de quarante personnes. Les costumes et les décors seront identiques à ceux de la Porte Saint-Martin ; les costumes, au nombre de deux cent cinquante, faits sur mesure, les armes, cartonnages, tout le matériel seront exécutés par les fournisseurs de ce théâtre ; les décors seront brossés par Dubosq qui est allé, ces jours derniers, s’entendre à Paris avec les entrepreneurs de la tournée. ... la troupe voyage avec tout un matériel de décors à appliques, charnières, pièces démontables qui, pouvant se planter sur n’importe quelle scène et se divisant en tous petits fragments, s’installe aisément dans des caisses, sans peser relativement trop lourd et dépasser les dimensions admises par les chemins de fer.
  Richard Mansfield was the first actor to play Cyrano in the United States in an English translation.
  The longest-running Broadway production ran 232 performances in 1923 and starred Walter Hampden, who returned to the role on the Great White Way in 1926, 1928, 1932, and 1936. Hampden used the 1923 Brian Hooker translation prepared especially for him, which became such a classic in itself that it was used by virtually every English-speaking Cyrano until the mid-1980s.
  In 1946 Hampden passed the torch to José Ferrer, who won a Tony Award for playing Cyrano in a much-praised Broadway staging, the highlight of which was a special benefit performance in which Ferrer played the title role for the first four acts and Hampden (then in his mid-sixties) assumed it for the fifth. Ferrer reprised the role on live television in 1949 and 1955, and in a 1950 film version for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. It became Ferrer's most famous role.
  Other notable English-speaking Cyranos were Ralph Richardson, DeVeren Bookwalter, Derek Jacobi, Michael Kanarek, Richard Chamberlain, and Christopher Plummer, who played the part in Rostand's original play and won a Tony Award for the 1973 musical adaptation. Kevin Kline played the role in a Broadway production in 2007, with Jennifer Garner playing Roxane and Daniel Sunjata as Christian. A taped version of the production was broadcast on PBS's Great Performances in 2009. In 2018, David Serero is the first French actor to play Cyrano in America in the English language.
caption: Benoît-Constant Coquelin created the role of Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)
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