DOMINGO'S NEW NOSE.(The Talk of the Town)(Placido Domingo )

In order to rehearse for his lead role in "Cyrano de Bergerac," which opens in a new production at the Met on May 13th, Placido Domingo has been wearing, along with his street clothes, three items characteristic of the swashbuckling nobleman: a pair of cuffed boots; a sword, the silvery handle of which pokes out of his sports jacket; and a fake nose of proportions sufficient to be visible even in those far reaches of the opera house where performers' faces are flesh-colored blurs. "You have to see the problem of this man," Domingo explained the other day, as he sat in a dressing room after rehearsal, still in full nose. "But, on the other hand, it cannot be something that is laughable, something that is going to be grotesque."

Though very substantial in appearance, the fake nose, Domingo explained, is lightweight and easy to wear, with a custom fit around the nostrils. It is made from latex that has been painted in layers over a plaster mold, and so, although it appears to be rigid, it is actually hollow and pliable. (It can even be squeezed at its tip, like a child's rubber duck, as Domingo demonstrated, quacking twice.) Domingo has been wearing the nose for every rehearsal, and so far has been happy to discover that his performance is uncompromised. "The breathing seems fine, and the resonance, it seems, is there," he said. He has not, he said, been applying Method principles to his portrayal of Cyrano by wearing the nose when he is not onstage. "Why should I wear it on the street?" he said. "It is not Halloween, you know."

The nose he had been wearing for that particular rehearsal--about four inches in length, with a slight hump in the bridge and a turned-up tip--was the fourth iteration that had been created for him by Victor Callegari, the Met's chief makeup artist. Working from a plaster cast of Domingo's own nose, which required the tenor to dunk his nose in a viscous substance called ...