Performing: Patrick Guetti, Misha Kiria, Irene Roberts, Hye-Young Moon, Arianna Manganello, Kieran Carrel, Dean Murphy
Don Quichotte was Jules Massenet's musical homage to a world literature classic on the opera stage. Everything is possible in the world of the eponymous hero: windmill sails become giant arms, he battles a horde of bandits, and his love for the fair Dulcinea is requited. Nonetheless, the knight of the sorrowful countenance is forced to accept that his dreams have no place in the reality of others. Don Quichotte, first performed in Monte Carlo in 1910, was Massenet's penultimate work of musical theatre and, in some ways, a reflection on death and the aging process. The 68-year-old composer was afflicted and wrote the score on his sickbed.
It is not only Don Quichotte, dying of a broken heart, who wonders in his later years how we might succeed in making our dreams of happiness come true. He narrates, through the ambiguous character of Dulcinea, how the ostensibly pure lust for life conceals a fear of its transitory nature.
Jakop Ahlbom, director, performer, magician, and Amsterdam resident, is known and celebrated throughout Europe for his unique approach to theatre. As evidenced by Vielfalt (2006), Innenschau (2010), Lebensraum (2012), and, most recently, Horror, his productions are a strange combination of pantomime, dance, music, and illusion bursting with magical, surrealistic, nightmarish images.
In French language with German and English surtitles.