Tilting at metronomes: Massenet's Don Quichotte opens at Grange Park Opera

To suggest that the ageing Jules Massenet identified himself with the title character of his Don Quichotte is nothing new — and late works such as this by definition encourage biographical interpretations. One of the main liberties of the opera, premièred in 1910 and very loosely based (via a contemporary verse play) on Cervantes, was to bring the character of Dulcinea (here ‘La Belle Dulcinée’) out of the realm of the imagination and to embody her as a distinctly flesh-and-blood mezzo-soprano. That the first singer to perform Dulcinée, Lucy Arbell, was the object of Massenet’s infatuation only emphasises the biographical parallels, all of which give extra layers to a gently wise and touchingly melancholy work.

What might have been better left hinted at, however, Charles Edwards’s new production at Grange Park Opera heavy-handedly emphasises, as a sentence preceding the otherwise unaltered programme synopsis seems to warn. ‘An elderly composer prepares to present a public showing of his latest opera to his friends in his salon…’ it reads ominously.