DON QUICHOTTE …IN THE LIVING ROOM!

The duo consisting of bassist Ugo Guagliardo and pianist Gerardo Felisatti, offers for this second House Concert of the microseason#1 season a program entirely dedicated to the legendary figure of Don Quixote.

The program opens with two cycles of French Chansons. In 1933, Austrian director Georg Wilhelm Pabst proposed Cervantes’ well-known poem Don Quixote in a cinematic guise. For the occasion he asks composers of the time, including Ravel and Ibert, to write the incidental music. Ibert’s Chansons cycle is chosen, probably because Ravel arrived late in delivery, but Ravel’s version remains highly regarded today. Also Austrian is composer Aloisius Ludwig Minkus, who was well known in Russia during the Empire. He devoted his entire life setting music to ballets for the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, including Don Quixote. Finally, to close the program we find excerpts from the third act of Massenet’s opera of the same name, in which the protagonist appears in the first person.

From Chansons, to ballet and finally to opera, a journey to discover the figure of Don Quixote in the world of music.

Program

M. Ravel, Don Quixote à Dulcinée
J. Ibert, Chansons de Don Quixote
A.L. Minkus, Don Quixote
J. Massenet, Don Quixote

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