From Webster Young, founder: Jean de Mazac forwarded me this Youtube presentation of themes from his opera Cyrano de Bergerac. To me the melodic content and its harmony has melodic virtue,  sounds heartfelt,  and seems to me promising for a new opera that could be very effective (which I believe he has already written – I have heard only these excerpts so far.)

I attended Placido Domingo’s production of Cyrano by Franco Alfano at the Metropolitan Opera in New York (pic above). At the time I was convinced that the story is perfect for opera. The one thing Alfano’s opera did not have was full melodies – Alfano’s opera had great material that could have become great melodies – but his purposely verismo style avoided that… it was a long night without one great set-piece aria.  So now I can say that if we could combine Jean de Mazac’s melodic material with Alfano’s otherwise great setting – we would have a great new opera for the repertoire…! Maybe the younger composer will succeed where Alfano fell short.