Scénique

Don Quixote Chez la Duchesse Opera by Boismortar

Saison

2023/2024

Opera Ballet by Joseph Bodin de Boismortar

Opera comic ballet in three acts on a libretto by Charles-Simon Favart created at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris in 1743.

Distribution

With
Mathias Vidal Don Quixote
Chantal Santon Jeffery Altisidore, The Queen of Japan
Marc Labonnette Sancho Pança
Nicolas Certenais Montesinos, Merlin, the Translator
Lucie Edel The Peasant Woman, A Lover, A Next
Charles Barbier A Lover
Gilles Benizio The Duke, The Japanese
Corinne Benizio L'Espagnole

The Spiritual Concert Choir and Orchestra
Hervé Niquet Direction

Corinne and Gilles Benizio (aka Shirley & Dino) Staging
Pauline Jolly Director's assistant
Cie La Feuille d'Automne
Philippe Lafeuille Choreography
Daniel Bevan Decorations
Anaïs Heureaux and Charlotte Winter Costumes
Jacques Rouveyrollis Lights
Jessica Duclos Lighting assistant
Elisabeth Geiger Head of song

Program

Production

Production Opéra-Théâtre de Metz Métropole Coproduction Royal Opera/Palace of Versailles Spectacles With the support of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles

Duration

1:45

Without intermission

Photo credit

Williams Bonbon - Metz Metropole

Additional information

Show in French with French and English subtitles
For all ages, to see as a family

‍

In 1743, two years before Rameau imagined his Platée, Boismortar has the Académie Royale de Musique play an extraordinarily modern and crazy “comic ballet”: Don Quixote at the Duchesse. Over the course of a totally crazy plot, the hero meets monsters, enchanters, princesses, Japanese... who are the pretext for so many quirky and daring dances and choruses. Musical beauty is mixed with a parodic and irreverent comic. A work of choice for Hervé Niquet, Corinne and Gilles Benizio!

Although he is little known nowadays, Boismortier was a prolific composer during the reign of Louis XV, producing in all the genres in vogue. His first major success was This Don Quixote at the Duchess's, a comic ballet that he invented with Favart, a brilliant librettist who transformed the subject of Don Quixote into a brilliant and colorful “theater within the theater” farce. Boismortar's writing sparkles with each sentence, in this pochade where the Duchess makes Don Quixote believe that he is meeting Dulcinée again and a gallery of characters including Merlin the Enchanter or the Infanta of the Congo, while he is unwittingly on the stage of the castle's private theater...

Hervé Niquet found the music for this gem in 1988, but for our greatest happiness it was brought to the stage with the complicity of Corinne and Gilles Benizio (Shirley and Dino), reconstituting the infernal trio of King Arthur. Attention, baroque delirium guaranteed!

This opera is available on CD released in September 2022 on the label Château de Versailles Spectacles >> more info