Don Quichotte - Massenet

National Opera Sofia

Performer: Francesco Rosa, conductor

Orchestra & chorus of the Sofia Opera

Violeta Dimitrova, chorus master

Plamen Kartaloff, stage director

Yoanna Manoledaki, scenes & costume designer

Antonaeta Alexieva, Choreographer

Don Quichotte - Orlin Anastasov

Sancho - Ventselav Anastasov

Pedro - Silvia Teneva

Garsias - Rositsa Pavlova-Indzheva

Rodrigues - Krasimir Dinev

Juan - Plamen Papazikov

Bandit chief - Alexander Georgiev

Sofia National Opera and Ballet, Bulgaria, 2009

INFORMATION

Even though it is mainly to Manon and Werther that Massenet owes his renown, he composed operas of different genre and character, which just as effectively reveal his fine lyrical vein and talent in depicting various emotions. Don Quichotte is brilliantly comic.

Finished in 1910, after a career studded with successes, the opera was premièred at the Opera Theatre in Monte Carlo. It was a resounding success, fostered by the presence, in the main roles, of famous singers such as the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin as Don Quichotte and Lucy Arbell as Dulcinée. A few months later, in December of the same year, it would be repeated at Paris’s Théâtre Galté-Lyrique, with Lucy Arbell this time partnered by Vanni Marcoux (Don Quichotte) and Lucine Fugère (Sancho Panza). The subject, from Cervantes’s masterpiece, had been versified by the young and extravagant writer Jacques Le Lorrain. The story is quite different from that of Miguel de Cervantes’s hero, appearing, rather, as a self-portrait of the poet himself: the knight becomes a model of virtue, of generosity, driven by lofty ideals; Dulcinée, from maid in an inn becomes a woman of the world. Massenet, who, despite the difficult period he was going through, conceived a rich score, full of verve and maturity.