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Windmills in the Asylum Brescia
Teatro Grande
11/07/2025 - & November 9, 2025
Jules Massenet: Don Quichotte
Nicola Ulivieri (Don Quichotte), Chiara Tirotta (Dulcinée), Giorgio Caoduro (Sancho), Erica Zulikha Benato (Garcias), Roberto Covatta, (Rodriguez) Raffaele Feo (Juan), Marta Leung (Pedro)
Coro OperaLombardìa, Diego Maccagnola (Chorus Master), Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali, Jacopo Brusa (Conductor)
Kristian Frédric (Stage director), Marilène Bastien (Set designer), Margherita Platé (Costume designer), Rick Martin (Lighting designer), Antoine Belot (Videography)
Massenet’s Don Quichotte (1910), premiered two years prior to the composer’s death, was his fourth to be commissioned by Raoul Gunsbourg (1860‑1955), the ingenious Romanian‑born impresario and Director of the Opéra de Monte‑Carlo. Under Gunsbourg, the principality’s opera house enjoyed its golden age early in the twentieth century, hosting premieres of operas by Massenet, Mascagni, Saint‑Saëns and even Puccini (La rondine, 1917), performed by the likes of Mary Garden, Geraldine Farrar, Claudia Muzio, Benjamin’s Gigli, Tito Schipa, Georges Thill, Titta Ruffin and Feodor Chaliapin.
Originated by Chaliapin, Don Quichotte has been a signature piece for star basses ever since. In recent years, basses who’ve championed the work include Nicolai Ghiaurov, Samuel Ramey and Ferruccio Furlanetto. I was fortunate enough to hear Ramey and Furlanetto in the role in New York in 1986 and in Chicago in 2016, respectively. As it’s far from a conventional opera, it cannot stand without a truly charismatic singer in the title role and an intelligent staging.
Perhaps for this reason, it has not managed to become part of the standard repertoire. The opera is atypical, as it does not concern star‑crossed lovers struggling with challenging circumstances and rivals. Moreover, it’s about idealistic chivalry and noble platonic love, concepts far removed from today. Dulcinée yearns for something greater than being admired and loved for her physical beauty. Don Quichotte believes in chivalry, honesty and devotion. In his quest, he imagines windmills to be monsters, a pig and a herd of sheep to be bandits, and promises to bestow on his loyal squire Sancho Panza a chateau and an island that are pigments of his imagination. What is so wrong with living in a world where reality is seen distortedly to soothe one’s soul? Dulcinée is touched and enamoured with Don Quichotte’s noble soul, and out of honesty declines his marriage proposal. She’s too wild and joyous for marriage, and, being an honest courtesan, cannot accept to fool the old man into believing his own fantasy of their union. Chivalry and platonic love are indeed too subtle to make the opera a perennial hit.
The above narration is the summary of the plot which is not directly inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605 & 1615) but rather from Le Chevalier de la longue figure (1904), a play by French poet Jacques Le Lorrain. It represents tableaux from Don Quixote. As such, it is indeed a challenging opera to stage. Perhaps it’s for this reason French director Kristian Frédric devised his concept of the opera as a fantasy of a dying man. He’s infirm, in an asylum for the psychologically afflicted. This Don Quichotte’s steed is his wheelchair, his sabre, and his walking stick, and Sancho Panzo and Dulcinée, nurses in the institution.
The setting affords several striking images, thanks to Marilène Bastien’s highly imaginative sets. Frédric has the inner child of patient Don Quichotte as a pivotal element, possibly as the infirm old man retreats into his memories. Certain scenes are presented from the perspective of a child, such as in Act III, when Don Quichotte retrieves Dulcinée’s stolen necklace. It opens with the old man reading from an oversized adventure book on an oversized chair, much higher than the chair on which the bandit stands. It’s a memorable image, but it’s not clear if in Don Quichotte’s fantasy world he was able to retrieve anything. Perhaps everything is a fantasy here.
Though the concept is innovative, it’s also confusing. Massenet’s Don Quichotte is an unfamiliar work, and within the opera’s tableaux one does not discover a condensed version of Cervantes’s work. It’s likely many in the audience were confused. Others heard during the intermission and at the exit of the theatre were not thrilled with the depressing images of an asylum.
Other than a few Russian operas, there are few instances where a bass is the lead, as is the case here. Fifty‑eight year old Italian bass‑baritone Nicola Ulivieri has enjoyed a stellar career over the past three decades both in Italy and throughout Europe. Don Quichotte is an ideal role for him, as charisma, acting skills and expressiveness are its chief requirements. Ulivieri impressed with amazingly clear diction, the best of the entire cast. His Act III prayer “Seigneur, prends mon âme, elle n’est pas méchante,” as he is about to be put to death by the bandits, and his Act V death scene were both moving and free of excess. The inward pathos of Massenet is not compatible with over‑the‑top delivery.
Chiara Tirotta was not an ideal choice for the role of Dulcinée, Don Quichotte’s idealized vision of womanhood. Tirotta’s mezzo is not dark enough for the sultry seductress. Frédric’s staging, which makes her a nurse, does not afford much opportunity for her to act the femme fatale. Unfortunately, Tirotta’s diction was not sufficiently idiomatic, reducing the impact of her best moments. Her Act IV aria, “Lorsque le temps d’amour a fui”, a melancholy, introspective piece that conveys Dulcinée’s disenchantment with ephemeral pleasure, was well sung, but failed to connect due to her botched diction. Nonetheless, she was effective in her Act IV duet with Don Quichotte, “Oui, je souffre votre tristesse,” where she rejects the old man.
Italian baritone Giorgio Caoduro’s Sancho was striking, despite opting for understatement. His diction was good, but not at the level of Ulivieri. His voice is pleasant and contrasted well with Ulivieri’s darker bass‑baritone. Given the contrast between Sancho and the earnest and noble Don Quichotte, it’s tempting to overdo the comedy. His extroversion is a compliment to Don Quichotte’s introversion. Mercifully, Caoduro didn’t overplay the comedic aspect.
The supporting cast were adequate but uneven, with several performers displaying excellent diction, while others sang embarrassingly poorly in a hodgepodge of incomprehensible French. Don Quichotte’s score is more subtle than those of more familiar works of Massenet. Jacopo Brusa conducted eloquently, managing to bring out the myriad colours of Massenet’s rich score.
At a time when cities with larger music markets are caught endlessly repeating La bohème, Tosca, Rigoletto and other warhorses, it’s admirable that Brescia’s Teatro Grande would take a chance on this relatively unfamiliar work, especially in a foreign language. As in the neighbouring region of Emilia-Romagna, where theatres in Ravenna, Modena and Reggio Emilia collaborate by sharing opera productions, OperaLombardia joins forces with four or five cities in the regions of Lombardia, Brescia, Pavia, Cremona, Como and Bergamo. In a brilliant continued initiative, these smaller cities, with populations between 100,000 and 250,000, unite annually to share productions, using venues of similar capacities. Brescia’s 2025‑2026 offerings include four operas and a ballet: Bizet’s Carmen; Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore; Massenet’s Don Quichotte; Verdi’s Nabucco; and Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. May this brilliant collaboration inspire smaller cities worldwide.
Ossama el Naggar
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