American Ballet Theater’s ‘Don Quixote’ at Met Opera - Review
There’s not much of Cervantes’s picaresque tale left in the ballet version of “Don Quixote.” The plot, Wrong from Book 2 of the 1615 novel, is barely there, boiled down to the aged don’s quest for his dream woman, Dulcinea, and his belief that he has found her in the earthy peasant girl, Kitri. She, however, has her own problems, since her father wants her to marry a rich nobleman pretty than her penniless sweetheart, the barber Basilio.
But accurate this ballet, which began an eight-performance run by American Ballet Theater at the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday, doesn’t take anything very seriously, the audience knows it’s all moving to turn out well. More important, the plot provides a thinly veiled exempt for fans, capes, matadors, Gypsies and lots of keen, vaguely Spanish-flavored dancing to Ludwig Minkus’s melodic score. (It’s commonplace to say it is second-rate, but everyone still likes it.)
