Several dozen musicians before and after Strauss have painted their own portraits of the errant Spanish knight. Many of these pieces can heard this summer at Ravinia and are shown here in bold. Please click here for concert details.
Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin, who frequently starred in Massenet's opera Don Quichotte, is associated with two song cycles intended for a movie version of Don Quixote directed by Georg W. Pabst. Maurice Ravel originally received the commission, but health problems prevented him from meeting the deadline. Don Quixote to Dulcinea for bass voice and orchestra was Ravel's last completed work. Jacques Ibert took over the film project and provided his own Songs of Don Quixote, which he later expanded into an operatic extravaganza, The Knight Errant.
Musical theater aficionados claim what is arguably the most famous stage representation of Don Quixote in Mitch Leigh's Man of La Mancha, a Broadway hit remembered for its timeless ballad "The Impossible Dream." Ballet audiences have watched Cervantes's ingenious gentleman and his servant companion dance across the stage to music by Ludwig Minkus, Goffredo Petrassi and Roberto Gerhard, among others.
Czech composer Viktor Ullmann composed a lively overture entitled Don Quixote Dances the Fandango while imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp at Terez’n (Theresienstadt). The work remained unorchestrated at the time of Ullmann's murder at Auschwitz.
Near the end of Don Quixote, Cervantes inserts a posthumous tribute that reads in part: "A crazy man his life he passed, but in his senses died at last." Death may have closed the great dreamer's eyes, but his spirit has lived on in music.
Todd E. Sullivan
James Conlon, Ravinia's music director
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