Songs are Not Songs

In honor of Rudy Giuliani explaining that "Truth is not truth," I thought I would help carry that kind of thinking forward and offer, "Love is Not Love."  This is from the musical, Cyrano, sung late in the show by Roxana when she goes to the battlefield to meet up with Christian.

Little known Alternative Fact:  Cyrano is actually based on Steven Millhauser's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Martin Dressler, written in 1997.

For lovers of fiction -- which is appropriate considering Mr. Giuliani's comment, though not at point here --  the music to this 1973 show was written by Michael J. Lewis, and both the adaptation and, surprisingly, the lyrics were written by novelist Anthony Burgess, best known for writing the book, A Clockwork Orange.  His straight adaptation of the Edmond Rostand play is also used by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

(The show, by the way, was a flop though has a great score and starred Christopher Plummer who despite it running only 49 performance won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.  Leigh Beery, who sings the song above, was nominated as Best Supporting Actress in a Musical.)

One of Broadway's great mysteries is how a 1973 stage musical can be based on a novel that was written a full quarter-century later with which it has nothing in common.  One theory is that fiction is not fiction.  And also that Edmond Rostand is not Edmond Rostand.