Tilting at windmills

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza
Gustave Dore

Everyone knows about Don Quixote and the windmills, even if they haven't read the long novel written by Cervantes in the early 1600's. The Spanish author Cervantes was a contemporary of English Shakespeare, and both are giants of literature. Don Quixote is considered the first modern novel and one of the greatest works of fiction ever published. The most famous lines in the book might be these:

Too much sanity may be madness, and maddest of all,
to see life as it is, and not as it ought to be.

And this:

Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading,
his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.

(Just substitute the word blogging for reading :-)

But along with all the Don Quixote movies, musicals and cartoons, there's also a rarely performed opera written by the French composer Massenet. We saw a new production of it yesterday at Seattle Opera. Despite the familiarity of the Don Quixote story, Massenet's operas Werther and Manon are much more popular. While it's fun to see something new at the opera, when you hear the words "seldom performed" and "opera" in the same sentence you wonder. Is the story lame? Characters shallow? Boring music? None of that was true and the music was beautiful, even though you don't leave the Opera House humming any big, famous arias. There is a soprano role, but the two leading characters (Don Quixote and Sancho Panzas) are both bass singers-- unusual. On the most basic level, it was a religious story with Don Quixote taking on a noble quest and dying a saint.

OK, I'll admit the highlight for me was watching "Millie" and "Desperado" from Branch's Quarter Horses in Bothell. They played Quixote's horse "Rocinante" and Panzas' donkey "Dapple." They were both perfect professionals, except for one call of nature on the stage, which you can't hold against them with the stress and all that. Especially when you think of all the things that can go wrong (but didn't) with a thousand pound animal carrying around a large, loud, singing man above the orchestra pit.