Paris National Opera

Ballets

Don Quijote

  
Ballet in 3 acts from the Miguel de Cervantes’ tale. This story has been written in 1605 and it is a Ludvig Minkus’ music. The first representation was at the Bolchoï Theater of Moscow in 1869.

 
Prologue:
Don Quijote, folksy gentleman, imagines that he is a doughty knight directly left from courtly novels very in vogue at that time. He hires his neighbour Sancho as his servant to start out together the conquest of the world.

Act 1:
On a great place of Barcelona, Kitri, daughter of the innkeeper Lorenzo, is searching in the crowd her beloved, the barber Basile. Her happy dance is stopped by her father who wants to marry her to the rich and noble Gamache, so he rejects Basile. Kitri pushes back Gamache with rudeness. The arriving of Don Quijote and Sancho Panca puts a stop to the quarrel. Lorenzo offers them hospitality in his inn. When Don Quijote catches sight of Kitri, he seems to see the woman of his dreams and offers her his arm to dance a minuet. Gamache is furious, they dispute temselves. Kitri and Basile profit from this occasion to flee.

 
Act 2:
The scene takes place in a gipsies’ camp. Kitri and Basile search a haven in an air-mill. They are startled by gipsies who try to rob their goods. But they are very poor so gipsies let them leave. Lorenzo and Gamache arrive like Don Quijote and Sancho. Gipsies wanting to protect the lovers, play tricks at the last arrived to delay them. Suddenly, Don Quijote is face to the air-mill and thinking that it is a gigantic enemy, he attacks it. But he is raised and then thrown down by mill’s blades. Unconscious, he dreams that he is transported in enchanted garden peopled young girls: the dryads. He avows his love to Dulcinea, the woman whose has always dreamt and who is Kitri’s ringer, but the dream vanishes.

Act 3:
Kitri and Basile have found a haven in a tavern. There, they party with some friends. But Lorenzo and Gamache land up them, Lorenzo always determined to marry his daughter to Gamache. To turn the corner of this situation, Basile uses a subterfuge: he makes like a suicide. Kitri begs the help of Don Quijote who convices Lorenzo to unite Kitri with the dying. He has barely given his benediction when Basile gets back on his feet gaily. They will be going to marry!
The ballet finishes with the wedding of Kitri and Basile, and we can perceive Don Quijote and his servant who are parting for new adventures.
 
The actual version danced in Paris National Opera is those of Rudolf Noureev, since 1980.