Chantecler (play)

Rostand was inspired to write the play after exploring the farming countryside around his new home, Villa Arnaga, in the Basque Country of the French Pyrenees, where he had come to live for health reasons after the phenomenal success of Cyrano de Bergerac and L'Aiglon.

Rostand wrote the play for Benoît-Constant Coquelin, known as "Coq" (the French word for a cockerel/rooster), who had created the role of Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897.

The play was not initially successful, partly because of the novelty of animal characters and the long delays (not all the fault of Rostand), but also to Guitry's uninspired performance, and because the sophisticated Parisians in the audience realised their way of life was being criticised.

The play begins with a prologue in which the "director" asks the audience to imagine themselves in a barnyard, and calls down a giant magnifying-glass to better see the animals up close.

The hens and the Blackbird then praise Chantecler's crowing skills until he enters and sings his "Hymn to The Sun" (a poetic set piece that remains a popular recitation in France).

At night, the nighttime birds of prey, along with the cat and the Blackbird, all led by an owl called the Grand Duke plot to kill Chantecler because his crowing interrupts their nefarious plans.

Chantecler bitterly denounces the Blackbird's soulless cynicism and the crowd's envious rooting for his enemy, and departs for the forest with the pheasant.

When the pheasant discovers the ruse, she demands that Chantecler prove his love by not crowing, but when he refuses this, she decides to trick him into listening to the nightingale's song, knowing its beauty will distract him long enough for dawn to appear without him.

The shot goes wide; Chantecler returns safely to the farmyard, where he will soon be joined by the captured pheasant, who has resigned herself to taking second place to the cockerel's devotion to his duty of crowing every morning.

Among published English translations of Chantecler are: Gertrude Hall (1910), Henderson Daingerfield Norman (1923), Clifford Hershey Bissel & William Van Wyck (1947); and Kay Nolte Smith (1987).

In June 1960, Disney told the Los Angeles Times that, following the release of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, two animated projects were in development, which were Chanticleer and The Sword in the Stone.

The younger Disney refused, but, because of his plans to build another theme park in the United States, he would approve only one animated film to be released every four years.

"[7] The story of Chantecler was loosely adapted into the 1992 American animated film Rock-a-Doodle, directed by Don Bluth and with the main character inspired by Elvis Presley, set in Tennessee in 1957.