唐吉訶德

The modern version of Don Quixote does not have much left of Marius Petipa’s original production. Moreover, Petipa was deeply hurt when Alexander Gorsky overhauled the production without consulting him: “Monsieur Gorsky shamelessly borrows my ideas”. However, without Petipa’s ballet, the still-running Gorsky production at the Mariinsky Theatre and all over the world would not have happened.
Marius Petipa created his first Don Quixote in in 1869 for the Bolshoi Theatre. He was not the first ballet master to stage a ballet based on an episode from Miguel de Cervantes’ novel. Various Don Quixotes have trodded European ballet venues since the middle of the 18th century. Ludwig Minkus composed the score for Petipa’s ballet. It was their first joint project and the starting point in their yearslong fruitful collaboration.
While Petipa staged a comedy for Moscow theatre, in his 1871 version of the ballet adapted for St Petersburg Don Quixote’s amusing adventures ended in his death. The critics’ reviews did not predict a long stage life for the production, but it managed to remain in the repertoire for 13 years and then was transferred to the Moscow stage. Alexander Gorsky undertook to edit the production at the start of the 20^th century. In order to make the ballet more lifelike, he transformed the symmetrical corps de ballet, so common for Petipa’s productions, into a playful and living crowd. He restaged many scenes, cut out the tragic finale, came up with new characters and used Petipa’s memorable findings from his other works.

Olga Makarova