Edmond Rostand

Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand (, , ; 1 April 1868 – 2 December 1918) was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism and is known best for his 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays contrasted with the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century. Another of Rostand's works, Les Romanesques, was adapted to the 1960 musical comedy The Fantasticks.

Early life Rostand was born in Marseille, France, into a wealthy and cultured Provençal family. His father was an economist, a poet who translated and edited the works of Catullus,

He and his fiancée Rosemonde Gérard became friends with Emmanuel Chabrier in 1889, and the composer quickly set three of his poems (and two of hers) to music; the following year the two collaborated on À la musique for the house-warming of a mutual friend. In 1890, Rostand published a volume of poems called Les Musardises. The same year he offered a one-act Pierrot play in verse to the director of the Théâtre François. This gave him the opportunity to write for the state theatre a three-act play, also in verse, as are all Rostand's plays. He considered himself a poet, whether writing plays or poetry.

The resulting play, Les Romanesques, was produced at the Théâtre François on 21 May 1894. It was a great success and was the start of his career as a dramatist. This play would be adapted in 1960 by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt into the long-running American musical The Fantasticks.

Rostand's next play was written for Sarah Bernhardt. La Princesse Lointaine was based on the story of the 12th-century troubadour Jaufre Rudel and his love for Hodierna of Jerusalem (who is the archetypal princesse lointaine character). This idealistic play opened on 5 April 1895, at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. The part of Melisandre (based on Hodierna's daughter Melisende of Tripoli) was created by Sarah Bernhardt He relocated to Cambo-les-bains, in the Basque Pyrenees, in 1903 for health reasons. Here he built himself a villa, Arnaga (now a Rostand museum) and worked on his next play, one for Constant Coquelin this time, Chantecler. Chantecler is a cockerel and the characters are birds and animals. "Chantecler" is the great play of Rostand's maturity, expressing Rostand's own deepest feelings as a poet and idealist.

The Romancers one act play is one of Edmond Rostand's most famous plays. This play is found to be read for study in the courses of many universities of the world.

When he died prematurely at fifty years old, Rostand was still writing plays. "La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan" was performed posthumously in 1922. There were two unfinished and unpublished plays – Yorick and Les Petites Manies.

Personal life

Rostand was married to the poet and playwright Rosemonde-Étiennette Gérard who, in 1890, published Les Pipeaux: a volume of verse commended by the Academy. 1894 (basis for the 1960 off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks The All-Too-Romantics"), verse translation by Thom Christoph (Genge Press, 2024) La Princesse Lointaine (The Princess Far-Away), 1895 La Samaritaine (The Woman of Samaria), 1897 Cyrano de Bergerac, 1897 L'Aiglon: A Play in Six Acts. 1900 Chantecler: A Play in Four Acts, 1910 La Dernière Nuit de Don Juan (The Last Night of Don Juan, in Poetic Drama), 1921 Le Cantique de L'Aile, 1922 Le Vol de la Marseillaise, 1922