Don Quichotte

Don Quichotte
Opera by Jules Massenet
Poster by Georges Rochegrosse for the first Paris production, at the Gaîté-Lyrique in 1910
Librettist	Henri Caïn
Language	French
Based on	Le chevalier de la longue figure by Jacques Le Lorrain
Premiere	19 February 1910 (1910-02-19) Opéra de Monte-Carlo

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 so many other dramatized versions of the story of Don Quixote, relates only indirectly to the great novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. The immediate inspiration was Le chevalier de la longue figure, a play by the poet Jacques Le Lorrain 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.

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 his other 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.

Don Quichotte was premiered in Monte Carlo on 19 February 1910, followed by stagings in Brussels, Marseille and Paris, all in 1910. In 1912 it was presented at the French Opera House in New Orleans (27 January), and the London Opera House (17 May). On 15 November 1913 the work was presented in Philadelphia. The Chicago premiere of the work (by the Chicago Grand Opera Company) took place at the Auditorium Theatre on 27 January 1914 and featured Vanni Marcoux and Mary Garden in the lead roles. Marcoux reprised the title role in Chicago with Coe Glade during the inaugural season of the Chicago Civic Opera House in December 1929.Don Quichotte received its premiere in Budapest in 1917, and the Opéra-Comique in Paris presented it in 1924 with Marcoux in the title role, Arbell and Fugère; Chaliapin sang it there in 1934. The Metropolitan Opera in New York City performed it nine times in 1926. After devastating reviews of those performances in particular, and criticisms of Massenet's music in general, by Lawrence Gilman in the Herald Tribune, the opera has never been revived at the Met, although it was performed by the Opera Company of Boston (staged and conducted by Sarah Caldwell) in 1974 (with Noel Tyl, Donald Gramm, and Mignon Dunn), and the New York City Opera in 1986.