While best known today for having composed the ending to Puccini's unfinished Turandot, Franco Alfano wrote some dozen operas, including Cyrano de Bergerac (1936) with a libretto by Henri Cain based on Edmond Rostand's drama of the same name. It is a moving tale of romantic misunderstanding, swashbuckling bravado and heartbreaking loyalty, in which the eloquent Cyrano feels unable to express his love for Roxane because of his famously protuberant nose except on behalf of his handsome but inarticulate friend, Christian.

A disaffected youth leaves home. With a friend, he explores a demolished house.

Dr. Wilfred Manz performs a magical experiment on a beetle-shaped amulet. His patience exhausted, he smashes his fist into some bottles and a few drops of blood fall onto the scarab. His laboratory is rocked by an explosion, the god Khepera appears and Manz is transformed into a demi-god magician. Thirty years later, Manz has assumed the name Khepera and lives in mysterious castle. Using his magical powers, he is killing heads of government and causing the collapse of major financial institutions. Jack Murphy, an American correspondent, witnesses the pandemonium following the suicide of the Spanish prime minister and notices an attractive nurse, Elena, take a small scarab which has fallen from the prime minister's lapel. Later, he visits an occult shop where the scarab is identified as being associated with the Egyptian god, Khepera. Murphy is captured and Elena — who was tricked into sacrificing her brother when they were children — once more takes up the sacrificial dagger...