48-52 mins
famous writer of the Russian Empire, Ivan Turgenev, once said that there are only two kinds of people in the world, one is Hamlet and the other is Don Quixote. It can be seen that the connotation of Don Quixote’s story is far more than a knight of the windmill. The video I chose is a one that combines the Don Quixote’s story with ballet.
Don Quixote’s story is relatively unwritten, as well as the clues are not very clear, therefore, it is not easy to adapt it to a ballet. The ballet which adapted from Don Quixote in the early days were not very successful. This problem was solved in 1801 by the director of the Paris Opera House, Miron. He focused on the love of a pair of young men and women, and converted Don Quixote into a clue to the story, which constantly promoted the development of the story.
In this ballet, Don Quixote is still immersed in his own fantasy, but his unreasonable troublesome has just contributed to the marriage of the protagonists, Basilio and Kitri. This adaptation was very smart. Because he did not change the character of Don Quixote’s, he is still the person that full of knight fantasy and spirit.
One of the most impressive scenes of Don Quixote’s story is that he imagines a huge windmill as a monster and fights against it. This ballet kept this scene very well, and after Don Quixote failed to fall into a coma, like entering a fairy’s dream, he imagined Kitri as his Dulcinea. Of course, everything is beautiful in the dreams but also short-lived when Lorenzo and Gamache interrupt Don Quixote’s dream. Don Quixote wants to help Basilio and Kiti, so it creates a ridiculous and a little comedy ending.
Overall, I really like the adaptation of this ballet about Don Quixote. It not only completely preserves the character of Don Quixote, but also gives everyone a relatively good ending.