Don Quichotte

by Jules Massenet (1842 - 1912)
Comédie-héroique in five acts. 1910
Libretto by Henri Cain, after the play by Jacques Le Lorrain, Le chevalier de la longue figure (The Knight with the Long Face), based on the novel by Cervantes
First performance at the Monte Carlo Opéra on 19th February 1910

The score of Don Quichotte contains Spanish pastiche at the very start. The rôle of Don Quixote was written for Chaliapin, particularly moving in the final death scene. Massenet was near the end of his life when he wrote the work and this is reflected in his choice of subject and his treatment of the protagonist.

Dulcinea is serenaded by her four admirers. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza appear, the former singing his praise of Dulcinea, his ideal. Preventing a duel between Juan and Don Quixote, Dulcinea demands that the latter retrieve for her a necklace, stolen by a bandit from her room. Don Quixote now sets out to find the necklace, to the disgust of Sancho Panza, but deflected momentarily from his purpose as he mistakes windmills for giants and does battle with them. Surrounded by bandits in the mountains, Don Quixote moves the bandit chief to pity, when he declares his identity as a knight errant, and is given the necklace. He blesses the bandits, as he goes, for they have understood him. Returning to Dulcinea's garden, Don Quixote gives her her necklace, hoping now for marriage and an end of his travels, but he is rejected, treated kindly by her but mocked by her guests. In the mountains Don Quixote prepares to die, bestowing on Sancho an imaginary island and seeing Dulcinea in a vision in his last moments.