The book’s triumph at home rapidly spread elsewhere in Europe, first in the original Spanish and then in translation. The first English translation, by Thomas Shelton, appeared in 1612, closely followed by César Oudin’s French translation in 1614, an Italian translation by Lorenzo Francosini in 1622, and a German translation in 1648 by Pasch Basteln von der Sohle, possibly the pseudonym of Cäsar von Joachimsthal. Thanks largely to these translations, the adventures of the gentle knight and his squire Sancho not only amused and delighted a wide reading public, but also soon became a source of inspiration for composers.

800 musical compositions

To date, there are over 800 musical compositions based on Don Quixote and other literary works by Cervantes, making him the Spanish author who has most inspired musicians1. The knight who goes by the name of Don Quijote, Quixote, Chisciotte and all its other variants, and especially some of the scenes from the novel, such as Camacho’s wedding, Sancho Panza and the government of the Island of Barataria, the knight and his squire’s sojourn at the Duke and Duchess’s castle and the Cave of Montesinos, to cite the most representative, have served as the inspiration for the greatest number of musical compositions. Among them there are two genres which, over the centuries, have proved to be particularly hospitable to the Castilian knight: ballet and lyric drama.

In the case of ballet, it is easy to see how the strong visual elements in the story afford a wealth of variety and colour in performance. The ballet genre is also heir to the great French musical tradition of ballet de cour, combining dance, récitative and air, which were performed by courtiers and even, on occasions, by the king himself together with other members of his family. From the very beginning of Don Quixote’s existence, France, more than any other country, has welcomed the figure of Alonso Quijano into its musical life. One early appearance was in Messrs Sautenir’s Ballet de Don Quichotte, first performed at the Louvre on 3 February 1614, of which the original score is held at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; the work was staged only one month after the publication of César Oudin’s French translation of the novel, and before Cervantes published Part Two of Quixote in 1615.

Why Don Quixote should have been such a frequent theme in lyric drama is less obvious. Regarded by many specialists to be unstageable from a technical point of view, adaptations of Quixote have nevertheless given composers the opportunity to experiment with numerous approaches, ranging from fidelity to the original novel to free invention, even though the task of setting to music the complex story of Cervantes’s hero is not easy. The earliest known operas inspired by Don Quixote were fittingly composed in Italy, the birthplace of drama per musica. These include Sancio, staged in Modena in 1655, with a libretto by Camilo Rima and music by an anonymous composer, and Il Don Chisciotte della Mancha by Carlo Fedeli, performed in Venice in 1680. By far the best known and most widely performed of the early operas on the Don Quixote theme, however, is the three-act opera entitled The comical history of Don Quixote, composed by Henry Purcell, Henry and John Eccles, Colonel Simon Pack, Ralph Courteville and Samuel Akeroyde, among others. The first two acts were performed at the Queens Theatre in Dorset Garden in 1694, the third act following in 1695. Thomas D’Urfey, the author of the complete libretto, introduced significant changes in the plot to emphasize the story’s comic character, as reflected in the title of the opera, and thereby pioneered a predominantly buffo approach to the subject matter.