Don Quixote

Who doesn't know him: Don Quixote, or in French, Don Quichotte, the sad hero of La Mancha, who rides an old nag into battle against windmills to please his beautiful Dulcinea? With his imaginative detachment from reality, the knight is one of the most important figures in literary history. Images, adaptations, and parodies of his character have been around for centuries.

In Jules Massenet's opera, which premiered in Monte Carlo in 1910, Cervantes' mad knight becomes a tragic hero who is broken by the evil world. For Dulcinée, Quichotte sets out in search of a necklace that was allegedly stolen from the beauty by a band of robbers: a cruel joke at the hero's expense. But thanks to his imagination! Don Quichotte bravely fights giants and other delusional figures, converts the robbers, and even finds the imaginary pearl necklace. Despite all this, Dulcinée does not hear him. His illusions are shattered by real life, as it is.

With French elegance and delicate melancholy, illusion and reality intertwine in this late Romantic classic, with Quichotte appearing as a brilliant dreamer. Directed by Julia Burbach, the dance and music theater ensemble of the Tyrolean State Theater presents an evening full of love, wit, and sadness, which speaks lightly of the difficulty of believing in beauty, goodness, and truth even where they do not exist.