A performance at the Burgundy Palace.
During a performance, a group of young aristocrats and musketeers contemplate the beautiful Roxane seated in her box. Christian too, from the stalls, gazes at her and tells himself that he must be in love with her. After a while Cyrano causes a scandal by interrupting the performance, the actor not being to his liking. A viscount provokes him by unwisely mentioning his huge nose. Cyrano, the poet and swordsman, challenges him to a duel and improvises a ballad during their combat. When this is over, Roxane’s governess informs Cyrano that her mistress wishes to see him the next day in private, at dawn, at Ragueneau’s in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Cyrano, who secretly loves Roxane, is jubilant. When he hears that De Guiche, colonel of the regiment and Roxane’s powerful suitor, has engaged a hundred men to fight Cyrano’s friend Lignière and that these cutthroats are lying in wait for their victim at the Nesle Gate, to vent his joy he decides to go there himself to confront them.