There is more to 19th-century ballet than fluttering sylphs, spectral broken-hearted peasant girls and doomed feathery princesses. There is comedy and fun, too. Take the 1869 classic Don Quixote, a Spanish romp loosely based on Miguel de Cervantes’ literary masterpiece. The ballet was Marius Petipa’s second major work — the first being The Pharaoh’s Daughter (which I reviewed a fortnight ago) — and it gave its first Russian audiences definitive proof of Petipa’s choreographic talent and theatrical genius.
Not many comic or comedy ballets have stood the test of time, thus prompting the erroneous but widespread belief that 19th-century ballet is mostly about tear-jerking stuff. Luckily, Don Q (as it is familiarly known among balletomanes) has survived to show that our ancestors could also have a laugh or two ‘en pointe’.
For a mid-19th-century comic work, Don Q is unusually complex with a huge cast of dancers and numerous set changes and theatrical effects, and it is generally accepted that only a select number of companies can stage it successfully.
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