An image from the Youtube of Francesco Guiccini’s beautiful song Cyrano
Today’s Cyrano Sunday was given to us by a friend of Patrick David Wheeler. She grew up listening to this song and when she found out he was playing Cyrano in our production she wanted to share it with him.
It is a stunning song in Italian by Francesco Guiccini, one of the most famous Italian Singers of the 1970’s. It was written 1996 and retells the Cyrano with its own unique spin. Here is the song in all its glory with a translation of the lyrics from Marco at lyricstranslate.com.
The song shows poignantly how the story of a lone, incorruptible force longing for connection and love still speaks to our souls.
Translation: Come on up, you with a short nose, rouged gentlemen, I can’t stand you anymore. I’ll stick my pen deep into your pride because with this sword I'll kill you whenever I want.
Come on up, scruffy poets, useless singers of wretched days, clowns who live by strengthless verses, you may have money and glory but you aren’t thick skinned; enjoy the success, enjoy it while it lasts since the audience is trained and you don’t fear them, and you go God knows where to not pay taxes with the sneer and the ignorance of the first in the class.
I’m just a poor cadet of Gascony, but I cannot stand people who don’t dream. Tinsels? Social climbing? I don’t take the bait and at the end of my license I don’t forgive and I strike!
Let's get it over with, come on, all of you, new protagonists, rampant politicians, come on political footmen, toadies and wimps, fierce presenters of false broadcasts, you who've often made an art of opportunism, come on liberalists, show your cards, anyway, there will always be those who will pay for it in this damned, absurd “Bel Paese”.
I don’t give a damn if I’m wrong, displeasing is my pleasure, I love being hated; with sly people and bullies I’ve always toyed and at the end of my license
I don’t forgive and I strike!
But when I’m alone, chained to my nose which always arrives at least half an hour before me, my rage subsides and I'm painfully reminded that for me, the dream of love is almost forbidden.
I don’t know how many women I've loved, I don’t know how many of them I've had, whether I or destiny are to blame, I've lost them all. And when I feel the weight of always being alone
I lock myself at home and write, and by writing I console myself; but inside me I feel that a great love exists,
I love without sinning, I love but I’m sad because Roxane is beautiful, we are so different, I can’t talk to her, I’ll talk to her by verses, I’ll talk to her by verses…
Come on, vacuous people, get it over with, you priests who sell everyone another life; if, as you say, there is a God of infinity, look inside your own heart, you’ve already betrayed him. And you materialists, with your idée fixe that God is dead and that man is alone in this abyss, you look for the truths on the ground, like pigs, keep your acorns, leave me my wings. Go home dwarfs, get out of the front, for my huge anger I need giants! From dogmas and prejudices, I don’t take the bait and at the end of my license I don’t forgive and I strike!
I strike my enemies with my nose and with my sword
but in this life today I can no longer find my way.
I don’t want to resign myself to be evil,
only you can save me, only you, and I write it to you:
There must be, I feel it, on Earth or in Heaven, a place
in which we won’t suffer, and everything will be fair.
Don’t laugh, please, at these words of mine,
I’m just a shadow and you, Roxane, the sun.
But I know you don’t laugh, sweetest lady,
and I don’t hide myself under your house
because by now I feel I haven’t suffered in vain
if you love me just as I am,
forever yours, forever yours,
forever your… Cyrano
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