Programme 12/5 — 4/6

Tickets for performances at the State Opera Prague are available at the relevant box offices.

In association with the Mime Department of the Faculty of Music, Academy of Music and Drama in Prague. Featuring members of the SACRA CIRCUS Prague acrobatics team.

The protagonists of Jules Massenet’s operas and oratorios are mostly female, as is indeed implied already by the names of his works: Thaïs, Hérodias, La Navarroise, Sappho, Ariane, Thérèse, Grisélidis, Cendrillon, Cléopâtre, Manon, Marie-Magdeleine. Setting an exception to the rule, the hero of Massenet’s last opera is a man, after all. Namely, Don Quixote, in the eponymous opera subtitled “comédie héroïque.” Massenet’s librettist, Henri Cain, drew his material from a French stage adaptation of the Cervantes novel, from the pen of Massenet’s contemporary, Jacques Le Lorrain, entitled Le Chevalier de la longue figure. The role of Don Quixote was made to measure for the legendary Russian bass, Fyodor Shalyapin. The latter triumphed in the opera’s premiere, in Monte Carlo, on February 19, 1910, and it was doubtless thanks to him that the work became widely staged and known. He also guest-appeared at the National Theatre in Prague, on June 1, 1934. The premises of today’s Prague State Opera saw one previous staging of Don Quichotte, a production that ran from 1965–1967 on the stage of the then Smetana Theatre under the baton of Albert Rosen and directed by Luděk Mandaus.