The Real Cyrano de Bergerac

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the world's much loved stage and screen characters has just returned to the cinema in a new film version starring Peter Dinklage. But what may not be generally known is that Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person who was sharper, funnier and more modern than the romantic hero he inspired.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Cyrano's biographer Ishbel Addyman, about an extraordinary figure, whose brave, independent and visionary thinking was years ahead of its time.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You've made this stage your personal style.
0:03.0	The dramatic muse has fled the building.
0:05.4	She's camped off when you started gilding,
0:08.0	the lily with your great big voice.
0:17.2	The poor muse had no choice.
0:21.0	That was Peter Dinklage, playing Sighano de Bajorac,
0:25.2	in the new film Sighano.
0:27.4	Adapted from Eric Schmidt's play, it was directed by Joe Wright.
0:31.8	Sighano is a flawed hero. He has an ordinary courage.
0:37.0	Bravado, he is witty and brilliant.
0:40.5	But unfortunately, he has also a great deal of pride.
0:45.4	And it's a pride that stops him being able to exclaim his love for the woman he is in love with.
0:52.9	It's all the first time that Sighano de Bajorac has inspired a film or a play.
0:58.0	Jérard Depardieu played the swashbuckling hero opposite Anne Broshet in 1990.
1:04.3	Steve Martin was a modern-day Sighano opposite Darohana in Roxanne in 1987.
1:10.8	And above all, there was the famous play by Edmond Rostan,
1:14.9	which premiered in Paris in December 1897,
1:18.7	which tells the story of a burlesque figure of a man with a very long nose,
1:23.6	who wooves his beautiful cousin Roxanne by proxy.
1:28.0	She falls in love with the face of Baron Christian de Noviette,
1:32.4	but with the words of Sighano de Bajorac.
1:36.1	Good night.
	...

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