Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse opéra de Boismortier

In 1743, two years before Rameau conceived his Platée, Boismortier staged an extraordinarily modern and zany "ballet comique" at the Académie Royale de Musique: Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse (Don Quixote at the Duchess). In the course of a totally delirious plot, the hero encounters monsters, enchanters, princesses and Japanese people, all of whom provide the pretext for daring, offbeat dances and choruses. Musical beauty meets parodic, irreverent comedy. A work of choice for Hervé Niquet, Corinne and Gilles Benizio!

Although little known today, Boismortier was a prolific composer in the reign of Louis XV, producing in all the fashionable genres. His first great success was Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse, a comic ballet he invented with Favart, a librettist of genius who transformed the subject of Don Quichotte into a brilliant and colourful farce of "theatre within the theatre". Boismortier's writing sparkles in every sentence, in this pochade in which the Duchess makes Don Quixote believe that he is meeting Dulcinea and a gallery of characters including Merlin the Enchanter and the Infanta of the Congo, when in fact he is unknowingly on the stage of the castle's private theatre...

Hervé Niquet unearthed the music for this nugget in 1988, but to our great delight it is brought to the stage with the help of Corinne and Gilles Benizio (Shirley & Dino), recreating the infernal trio of King Arthur. Baroque delirium guaranteed!

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