Don Quichotte

Don Quichotte (Don Quixote) is an opera in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Caïn. It was first performed on 19 February 1910 at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. Massenet's comédie-héroïque, like many dramatized versions of the story of Don Quixote, relates only indirectly to the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. The immediate inspiration was Le chevalier de la longue figure, a play by the poet first performed in Paris in 1904. In this version of the story, the simple farm girl Aldonza (Dulcinea) of the original novel becomes the more sophisticated Dulcinée, a flirtatious local beauty inspiring the infatuated old man's exploits. Composition history Conceiving originally Don Quichotte to be a three-act opera, Massenet started to compose it in 1909 at a time when, suffering from acute rheumatic pains, he spent more of his time in bed than out of it, and composition of Don Quichotte became, in his words, a sort of "soothing balm". In order to concentrate on that new work, he interrupted composition of another opera Bacchus. Despite its five acts, there is under two hours of music in the opera. Massenet identified personally with his comic-heroic protagonist, as he was in love with Lucy Arbell who sang Dulcinée at the first performance. He was then 67 and died just two years later. The role of Don Quichotte was one of the most notable achievements of the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, for whom the role was specifically conceived. The opera was one of six commissioned from Massenet by Raoul Gunsbourg for the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.