Massenet Don Quichotte Brengenz

Ensemble Caprice under the direction of Matthias Maute presents Joseph de Boismortier's baroque opera-ballet Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse, featuring singers Arthur Tanguay-Labrosse (Don Quixotte), Dominique Cote (Sancho Panza), Catherine St-Arnaud (Altisidora) and Geoffroy Salvas (Merlin and Montesinos).

Around the middle of it 18th century began a basic stylistic A radical change in the history of music: the Baroque took its farewell and classical music made its entrance. Georg Philipp Telemann was one of the first to perceive and enthusiastically take up the new, fresh wind. At an age at which others have long since retired, a second creative spring almost began for him: the German Singspiel had just been launched by composers of the young generation, such as Hiller and Dittersdorf, the 80-year-old Telemann sits down with a 20-year-old librettist and sets the story of "Don Quixote at the Marriage of Comacho" to music full of wit and grace.

Ludwig (or Léon) Minkus does not rank very high on anyone’s list of distinguished composers, but his music nonetheless survives thanks to the tuneful scores he turned out for the ballet, particularly for the choreographer Marius Petipa. And it is probably Don Quichotte that is the best-known today, closely followed by La Bayadère . Until the Russian ballet companies began touring the West in the 1950s and 60s, audiences knew only the pas de deux, which was a staple of many a touring company. But once the Kirov and Bolshoi showed us that there was considerably more to the work, productions began to proliferate. Rudolf Nureyev even made a full-length film of the ballet almost 50 years ago with the Australian Ballet Company, which allows us to see the captivating Lucette Aldous. He then went on to stage the piece for many other companies, including the Paris Opera. Aside from the fact that today we don’t know how much of Don Quichotte is actually the work of Petipa, as it was revived and revised by Alexander Gorsky, among a great many others, rendering meaningless the credit “based upon Marius Petipa,” what Nureyev gives us is his version of the ballet as danced by the Kirov during his time with that company.

Leonard Slatkin is an exceptionally versatile conductor, but it is perhaps in French repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries that he feels most comfortable. The singers in Ravel's exquisitely formed little comic opera L'Heure espagnole, complete with cheating lovers hidden inside grandfather's clocks carried up and down stairs, are all entirely appropriate and admirably clear, but it is really Slatkin who's the star here, right from the "Introduction" that's so artfully linked to what follows. Ravel here cultivates a kind of updated accompanied recitative, well matched to his stated goal of reviving the old tradition of Italian opera buffa.

Don Quichotte est le sans doute le roman espagnol le plus connu et le plus lu au monde. Sa publication remonte à 1605 pour la première partie et 1615 pour la seconde. Le récit se présente comme le fruit de recherches en archive et l'auteur s'invite volontiers dans la narration, ce qui en fait un roman moderne, considéré comme précurseur. Les aventures de Don Quichotte de la Manche décrivent un héros tour à tour comique, touchant, rêveur, fabuleux et courageux, qui est devenu aujourd'hui un véritable archétype littéraire.