Edmond Rostand, le père de Cyrano

Just 120 years ago, Edmond Rostand gave birth to one of the most emblematic characters of the theater. Even today, Cyrano de Bergerac is the most played play in the world. Why did this writer of Marseillaise origin, whose career exploded in Paris, settle here, in the heart of the Basque Country, in this exceptional residence? In Cambo-les-Bains, Edmond Rostand has become the face of this little coquettish village in the southwest. In this community of less than 5,000 inhabitants, Place Zéalée honors the famous character of the theater, Cyrano de Bergerac, and his author, Edmond Rostand. At the entrance of the village, the Villa Arnaga, owned by the writer, built between 1903 and 1906, attracts all eyes. Hello, Béatrice. Hello, Laura. Thank you very much for welcoming me to the Villa Arnaga, Edmond Rostand's house here in the Basque Country. When we look at this house, we see that Edmond Rostand absolutely wanted to immerse himself in the typically Basque setting. It is a will of Edmond Rostand and his architect, Albert Tournaire, to be inspired by the farms of the region. They really want to enter this landscape, and for that, they create a red columbage house. You have the roof, a soft roof, the windows as well. Nevertheless, they will adapt it to contemporary needs. It is no longer pure Basque. We will later call it Neo-Basque. It is a construction that allows much more light to enter than in traditional Basque farms. Will you show me around this house? Let's go. It is thanks to the money from the successful play, Cyrano de Bergerac, written in 1897, that Edmond Rostand will acquire this land to build the house of his dreams. And of course, inside the house, the references to this success are not missing. We enter the great hall of Arnaga, the main central room of the house, in which there are nods on the creation of Cyrano. There you have the balcony, which evokes the famous scene of the balcony, where Roxane is up there, Christian and Cyrano below. Another nod is also on the frieze which runs in the upper part of the room. You have the scene of the duel, which is represented by Cyrano, which is at the end of the scene of the duel. At the end of the sentence, I touch. The whole of the house is a theater set, in which Cyrano has an important place. And the library, in particular, to which we are heading. Even if Cyrano de Bergerac was written before the purchase of this residence, a large number of objects plunge us into the universe of this dramatic hero. There is a library dedicated to Cyrano de Bergerac. At the time, the whole of the room was covered with books. There were 12,000 books. Today, there is a small quantity left. Cyrano de Bergerac, for example, with this stage chair, on which Constant Coquelin sat at the last act of the play. Contemporary noses, with the nose of Michel-Louis Hermos and the nose of Pierre Santini. The famous nose of Cyrano de Bergerac, the main feature of this character. But who was he? He was a historical figure, who lived in the 17th century. He was a writer, a pamphleteer, a man who was against central power. He is a character who has all the dramatic springs that are necessary for a real work. He has this famous panache. He knows how to write. All this will help Constant to build this character. But there will be other springs that will be necessary for him, that he draws from his own experience. He has, in particular, a peony at the Stanislas College, which is a truly immeasurable nose. And that's how he was inspired to build this character. So we have in this room an extraordinary object. It's the desk on which Edmond Rostand wrote Cyrano de Bergerac. But it's absolutely incredible as an object. It's the real desk. And I saw several actors with tears flowing. In just nine months, the writer will give birth to the emblematic character of Cyrano de Bergerac. The original manuscript has disappeared, but the Villa Arnaga keeps preciously an inestimable treasure in the reserves of the house. This is the top secret place. No one enters, except me. The private diary of Edmond's wife, Rosemonde, dating from the beginning of the 20th century, inaccessible to the general public. It reveals to us the secrets of the fabrication of Cyrano. She describes it when she writes. It was a man who entered without speaking and turned his moustache indefinitely with his eyes fixed on a wall where the temptation was, I believe, huge sheets of charcoal. It was a pale hand, writing feverishly many lines of a very small writing and a lot of torn paper thrown severely into the corbell. So here we see the doubt that Rostand has. He is a man who is torn by creation and he is never satisfied with what he has. This diary mainly teaches us that it is thanks to Rosemonde who recovers the lumps of the room in her husband's trash that Cyrano was able to see the light of day. A work written in green to which no one believed, neither the theater directors nor the actors themselves. No one expected this success. It was at the end of the play, two hours of reminiscence. Forty times, Coquelin and the troupe go in front of the audience. In the room, no one wants to leave. They are all there wanting to enjoy this unique moment in the history of the theater. It only happened with Victor Hugo and since then it has never happened again. It has become a worldwide success. The critics, the next day, were said to be buzzing in the press. It really went around the planet. Very quickly, Russia played Cyrano, the United States, etc. It is still a piece that they say is played by Cyrano. While Edmond Rostand is at the peak of his career with Cyrano de Bergerac, he suddenly falls ill. His doctor asks him to retire for three months in the countryside and advises him a small town far away from the Basque Country, Cambo-les-Bains. Poncho, can you explain to me the attachment that Edmond Rostand had for this region of the Southwest? I'm not sure we can talk about attachment at the beginning. Mr. Rostand comes to Cambo a little by accident, we can say, since he comes on the recommendations of Professor Granché who had recommended him Cambo-les-Bains to recover his health. We are at the beginning of November, it is the beginning of winter, so we consider to go back to Paris. We are so bored here. And then, in this month of November, so painful, a month of December will follow, almost summer, and this is where Mr. Rostand will really start to discover this Basque Country, to travel it, to love it, and then he will say to himself, and this is where Mr. Rostand really decides to stay in the Basque Country. Built in three years, this house overshadows the Basque village, placed there, in the heart of a green screen of 15 hectares. And it is in this setting, far from the Parisian theaters, that Edmond Rostand writes other great successes of his repertoire, like the story of the reign of a rooster in a Basque village, disturbed by the arrival of a hen with whom he falls madly in love, the play Chantecler. When we see this domain, this house and its gardens, we can think that Edmond Rostand had a bit of an excessive mind. Yes, and it is common that tourists tell me that El Megalo lived here. In fact, I think that it was not someone from Megalo, it was someone who was very attached, very human too, and to illustrate this, I always tell them this anecdote. You should know that here, from the time of Mr. Rostand, there was a small boat attached to a dock, and in the summer, when it was hot, when the service was over in the house, Mr. Rostand proposed to his staff to go for a walk, to take a break, by going for a walk on the piece of water that was at the bottom of the garden. We find a little bit his generosity, the humanist side, and in the acts here in Arnaga, people preferred to deal with Mr. Rostand rather than his director. In 1918, at only 50 years old, the writer was carried away by the Spanish flu. He lived only 12 years in the Villa Arnaga. Shortly after, his wife Rosemond and his two children, in great financial difficulty, had to sell the domain. Then it was the town hall that bought it in 1960 to make it a homage house. It is in this same modest museum that a rare and emblematic piece has found its place for more than 15 years. Aline, we are here in front of an exceptional object. The Cesar that Gérard Depardieu obtained in 1991 as Best Actor for Cyrano de Bergerac. Why do you think Gérard Depardieu wanted to dedicate this Cesar to Edmond Rostand? I think he wanted to pay homage to Edmond Rostand and wanted this piece of art to be in the house that Rostand had occupied. Because Cyrano de Bergerac is a bit like Edmond Rostand? He is a lot like Edmond. This Cesar is quite heavy. He weighs a lot. This Cesar is kept in a very special room. This is the office where Edmond Rostand used to write his pieces. He liked to hang around because it was surrounded by warm wood. He liked to write most of his last pieces With more than 90,000 visitors each year, the Villa Arnaga, Edmond Rostand's house, has become the third most visited monument in the Basque Country.