Don Quixote

BOOK I

La Mancha Inc, one of the world's largest international holding companies, employs people from all over the planet. Cide Hamete Benengeli, the company's elderly and wealthy Spanish-Arab president, has had enough of his boring and useless life and seeks refuge in reading knightly books from the Middle Ages. Soon his passion becomes pure madness. That is when he becomes convinced that he is the ancient knight Don Quixote, one of the characters in his knight's books, and everything transforms before his eyes into extraordinary worlds of the past, populated by kings, virgins and wizards, who are in fact none other than his colleagues, relatives and friends.

The journey officially begins when Miguel, the company's clumsy archivist, discovers the president's secret library, hidden in the underground archives of La Mancha. Benengeli, aka Don Quixote, adopts Miguel as his squire and calls him Sancho Panza. After making makeshift armour with his help and finding a few questionable horses, the two can search in and around the La Mancha office for adventures and injustices that need to be righted. A few metres outside the building, however, things turn out differently: Don Quixote mistakes a huge air conditioner for two menacing giants with huge arms, and he hurls himself at them, short-circuiting and injuring himself. Sancho then takes him back to the La Mancha canteen in search of refreshment.
Here, Don Quixote confuses Nicola, the canteen cook, with a king, and Dalisay, a cleaning lady, with the noble lady Dulcinea del Toboso: to the former he asks to be given the title of knight, to the latter he promises that he will do any feat he performs in honour of her name. Meanwhile, Sancho, exhausted and tested by hunger, also begins to have his first daydreams: these hallucinations increase when, after they resume their journey out of the palace, he mistakes a rubbish bag for a bag of money and tries to pay a hotdog vendor with it. At the same time, Don Quixote causes further unrest by conspiring with a passing nun and trying to free two pickpockets who have just been arrested by a police officer. The two are immediately arrested and thrown into jail on the spot.

In prison, Miguel, enraged by the follies into which his boss has dragged him, takes off as a squire and insults Don Quixote by calling him 'the Knight of the Sad Face'. The two are rescued by Antonia, Lord Benengeli's niece. While Miguel leaves Benengeli and goes his own way, Antonia, with the help of her companion Samson, takes her uncle back to La Mancha to try to bring him to repentance, but it is all in vain and she is forced to the extreme: burning all his books, the cause of all his ills.

Intermission

BOOK II

Ten years go by. Miguel had been hired during those years to write a witness report for CEO Mr Freestone's new La Mancha project. It turned the scandals and adventures of ex-president Mr Benengeli, aka Don Quixote, into a global success story. Having published these memoirs, the ex-shieldboy is now extremely famous and rich, but seems bored, with no clear purpose in life. When Miguel hears one day that there are apocryphal stories, unauthorised sequels to the adventures he has written, he goes to the rest home where Mr Benengeli is confined, and 'wakes up' Don Quixote, aiming to make him forget these sequels by writing a new part of their story.

The two leave again on their pairs. Immediately Miguel tries to write down Don Quixote's new exploits, but they all turn out to be pathetic and unsatisfactory in his eyes. Don Quixote also notices that something is wrong when, faced with a woman whom his squire calls Sancho Dulcinea del Toboso, he does not recognise either of them as such, but sees only a complete stranger and a cleaning woman. Don Quixote then begins to doubt the authenticity of the world around him, which seems completely different to him than before. It is as if all the enchantment of the story he knew has vanished forever before his eyes and only its empty skeleton still vaguely reminds him. He feels trapped by a terrible spell and decides then to descend into the deep Cave of Montesinos, a hellish place where no mortal may descend because it is the repository of the essence of all things. Miguel, troubled by this thought, tries to stop him, but Don Quixote succeeds thanks to mysterious help.

In the cave, Don Quixote realises that he is nothing but the protagonist of a story Miguel himself invented to save himself from the emptiness of reality, and all of humanity from its madness, which has led it to trade dreams for material success. 

Faced with this truth, Don Quixote tries to escape and free himself from his fate, which he simply recognises as a new prison, namely the one an author has created for his character. Always appearing in different worlds and leaping out and back into the story, Don Quixote's final epic struggle thus begins. It is the struggle of a character who, by really existing, causes the author to question all his certainties. A struggle that can only be resolved with the mysterious and unpredictable help of one person: the reader.

Don Quixote is a co-production from OPERA2DAY and the New European Ensemble

Artistic team

Stage director and librettist Stefano Simone Pintor
Music Vanni Moretto
Conductor Hernán Schvartzman
Scenography Herbert Janse
Costumes Mirjam Pater
Hair & make-up Nienke Algra
Technical production Ronald Tebra
Light design Uri Rapaport
Sound design Arne Bock

Cast

Mr. Benengeli / Don Quichot Mattijs van de Woerd
Miguel / Sancho Panza Manuel Nunez-Camelino
Mr. Freestone / Friston the Sorcerer Jeremiah Fleming
Dalisay / Dulcinea & Others Alena Dantcheva / Sandra Sinivälli (4 Feb and 3 Mar)
Antonia / The Nun & Others Michaela Riener / Femke Hulsman (4 Feb and 3 Mar) 
Samson / The Knight of the White Moon & Others Max Bruins / Carlos Negrín López
Nicola / The Hot Dog Vendor & Others Massimo Altieri
A man / The Delivery Man & Others Samar Qahtan
Employees / Passers-by & Others Participants

Ensembles

New European Ensemble
la fonte musica

Duration

Book I: 80 minutes
break
Book II: 60 minutes

Surtitles

The opera is surtitled in Dutch and English

New stories of Don Quixote

During the tour, more than 1,000 schoolchildren and participants will write new stories about Don Quixote, inspired by their own lives. The stories will be used in the performance. After the performance, the stories can be read on our website. After the tour, 100 of the stories appeared in an e-book, which you can download as pdf.

Blind interpreter

The performance on 22 February at Het Nationale Theater is suitable for people who are blind or visually impaired. Foundation 'Komt het Zien!' enables theater experience for people who are blind or visually impaired by means of live audio description. Through headphones, an interpreter can be heard during the performance describing the visual aspects. In addition, there is a special meet & feel beforehand to get acquainted with the set, costumes and singers.
For more information, visit the website of Stichting Komt het Zien!

Sensory-friendly

The performance on 18 March at Het Nationale Theater is suitable for people with a high sensitivity to stimuli. The performance itself will not be modified, but the theater will provide a sensory-friendly reception. It is also possible to leave the auditorium during the performance.
For more information, visit the HNT Onbeperkt website.