Moonlight is magical, much dreamier than the cold light of day, and the perfect lighting for any tale of romance. Artists, writers, composers, playwrights, filmmakers have all played with the light of that mysterious, changeable moon. The moon's appearance changes daily, and yet the moon's cycle is predictable. New moon to Full Moon, waxing and waning. The moon dance mirrors that age-old formula that audiences find so satisfying — the standard boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl romance. From Romeo and Juliet to West Side Story, La Boheme to Moonstruck, works of art have men and women falling in and out of love by the light of the silvery moon. Characters can hide in the shadows or bask in the glow. In the theater, we can enjoy the warmth of romance, without actually being plunged into the darkness of the real heartache that comes with a love lost.
This year, Rooftop has the opportunity to introduce students to a classic tale of romance. San Francisco Opera's production of Cyrano de Bergerac, an opera by Franco Alfano starring tenor Plácido Domingo, is based on Edmund Rostand's play of the swordsman-poet with an enormous heart and an even larger nose. In Cyrano, the moon is like another character, always present watching over the scene.
It's instructive to go back to the source material in order to see how a composer creates music to reflect a scene's atmosphere and time of day.
Here is the balcony scene from a 2008 Broadway production of Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, featuring Kevin Kline as Cyrano and Jennifer Garner as Roxanne. Cyrano is persuaded by Christian, the handsome tongue-tied suitor of Roxanne, to help him woo Roxanne.
And here is that same balcony scene in the opera version with Alfano's music. You can hear the instruments employed by Alfano to capture the poetry of a floating full moon with shimmering moonlight through the music — listen for the lyrical violins, the use of the flute and the sweeping harp. As Cyrano and Roxanne start letting out their true feelings, the music swells and ebbs with their emotions. The scene ends with a trio, Christian climbs up the balcony to kiss Roxanne as Cyrano hides in the shadows. The climatic kiss is coupled musically with five crashing chords — the first chord that we hear is dissonant — reflecting Cyrano's internal conflict — before the music resolves with a big finish.
In the final scene, Cyrano reads to Roxanne as night falls. In the dark, Cyrano reads Christian's letter without seeing, because he is the true author. Roxanne realizes that he knows the words by heart, and she discovers that it was Cyrano, not Christian, who wrote the letters that won her heart. And as he is dying, he asks Roxanne if she will mourn for him, "Philosopher, physician, poet, brawler, musician; famed for his lunar expedition and for duels and battles no less; and lover too, to his own distress! Here lies Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, who was everything yet was nothing. I beg your pardon, but I cannot stay. See, the moon's rays come to call me up!"
Interestingly, de Bergerac is one of the few creative writers to be honored on the moon! The character of Cyrano de Bergerac is actually based on a real person. Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French dramatist and duellist who wrote a book called, The Other World: The Societies and Governments of the Moon. In 1970, a moon crater was named Cyrano, after the French author who wrote of imaginary visits to the Moon and Sun. The novel has been historically referred to as Voyage dans la lune or "A Trip to the Moon."
The iconic Méliès film has been referenced in contemporary films such as Moulin Rouge, and even a music video by the Smashing Pumpkins! http://www.archive.org/details/le_voyage_dans_la_lune
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