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O P E R A N O T E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
November 19 - December 7, 2016
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second act’s windmill set-piece to life.
Don Quichotte
opened on February 19,
1910 and was an immediate success. Audiences
in Monte Carlo were especially transfixed
by Chaliapin’s performance in the title role,
although Massenet, who never warmed to the
Russian’s overly emotive acting style, much
preferred another exceptional artist, the French
bass-baritone Vanni-Marcoux, star of the Paris
premiere later that year. While some Parisian
critics were less than enthusiastic about the
libretto, there were few reservations about the
quality of the musical craftsmanship. Massenet
greeted the triumph with his usual humility:
despite a continued decline in his health, he
was already immersed in his next project.
During the remaining two years of his life,
Massenet would complete three further operas,
although he would live to see only one of them
performed.
Both
Roma
and the two posthumous
operas –
Cléopâtre,
and the Rabelais adaptation
Panurge
– disappeared quickly among the
musical developments of the twentieth century,
but
Don Quichotte
managed to hang on to the
fringes of the standard repertoire. While it
may have been conceived initially as a vehicle
for Chaliapin, Massenet’s command of mood
and his ability to craft elegant, understated
melodic lines transformed it into something
far greater. Certainly the noble theme of Don
Quichotte’s first-act serenade – which recurs
throughout the opera, most notably in the
orchestral preface to the third act – ranks with
the composer’s most inspired creations.
Although
Don Quichotte
was written at
a time when the impressionism of Ravel and
Debussy had started to take hold in popular
tastes, Massenet’s orchestral textures remained
simple and direct. The opening village dance
may borrow from the French tradition of
Spanish exoticism – Bizet’s
Carmen
, or Ravel’s
Rapsodie Espagnole
are two obvious examples –
and the windmill scene is necessarily frantic in
its execution. Yet the opera’s finest moments
benefit from a more subtle approach. The pious
finale of the third act, somewhere between
an opera and a mass, conveys a nobility of
character which transcends the ironic heroism
of earlier scenes; and both Don Quichotte’s
final meeting with Dulcinée, and his fifth-act
farewell, gather their emotional force more
from quiet lyricism than grand gestures.
TONY ROMANO
Yet while
Don Quichotte
ended up being
more than a star vehicle, its longevity still
owes much to the fascination inspired by its
title character: since the opera first appeared,
some of the greatest basses and bass-baritones
of their times have fallen in love with the role,
which relies as much on natural charisma as
vocal stamina. It requires a larger-than-life
presence to realize the full profundity of Don
Quichotte’s final moment. In the hands of a
great performer, the moral transformation of
the bandits in the third act can become not
merely plausible but wholly compelling.
It’s no surprise that many great singing
actors of the past several decades – including
three who have sungQuichotte at Lyric (Nicolai
Ghiaurov, Samuel Ramey, and this season
Ferruccio Furlanetto) – have championed the
role. Yet it’s more than mere star power that
has allowed
Don Quichotte
to endure. For
all that Le Lorrain’s play and Cain’s libretto
may have diverged from Cervantes, the opera
nonetheless taps into an essential aspect of
the Don Quixote character: in Massenet’s
treatment, the knight of La Mancha is able to
bring everyone around him – even those in the
auditorium – that much closer to the folly and
grandeur of dreams.
Jesse Simon is a writer and editor specializing in
opera and classical music. He holds a doctorate in
history from the University of Oxford and, since
2012, has lived in Berlin.
Nicolai Ghiaurov, Lyric’s first Don Quichotte in 1974, returned for the
1981 revival (pictured here, with Donald Gramm as Sancho in Act One).
ILLUSTRATIOND COURTESY OF CUSHING MEMORIAL LIBRARY & ARCHIVES, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
Don Quixote and his horse Rocinante’s
unfortunate encounter with the windmills,
depicted by a prominent French illustrator of the
early 20th century, Edmond-François Calvo.
In a effort to win her heart, Don Quixote
serenades Dulcinea — an illustration
from 1847 by French engraver/illustrator
Tony Johannot.