American Ballet Theater Perform "Don Quixote" at Met Opera House

• 

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 07 July 2026 14:31

Written by Jack Angstreich

 

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful Metropolitan Opera House, on the night of Tuesday, June 30th, I had the great privilege to see a superb version of the classic Don Quixote, presented by the American Ballet Theater, continuing a strong season. 

A comic and fantastical ballet, it is a pastiche of Spanish styles. As a work of classical ballet, it is consummately generic, in the non-evaluative sense—one has the impression that its initial act, set in a Barcelona marketplace, for the most part—and with slight adjustments—could be transposed with that of Swan Lake, Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, or even Romeo and Juliet, to take the first examples that spring to mind. The second act fulfills the generic demand for ballerinas in tutus, here as fairies, just as elsewhere they might be swans, nymphs, wilis, sylphides or the like. The final act functions as a series of divertissements, as in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and so forth.

This new production preserves the original choreography of the great Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky, in a staging by Susan Jaffe and Susan Jones. The bulk of the charming music, arranged by Jack Everly, is by the underrated Ludwig Minkus who, with Riccardo Drigo and Cesare Pugni, forms a triumvirate of neglected composers for the classical Russian ballet whose music is never heard in the concert hall. Additional music is provided by the magnificent Isaac Albeniz, arranged by David Carp. (The score was admirably conducted by the veteran Charles Barker.) The appealing sets and costumes were designed by the celebrated Santo Loquasto, with effective lighting by Natasha Katz.

This performance had a stellar cast, led by the fabulous Herman Cornejo and Skylar Brandt as Basilio and Kitri, who both excelled in Swan Lake at the start of the season as well as last year. (The partnership of Ivan Vasiliev and Natasha Osipova in these roles still seems unsurpassable but Cornejo was possibly the equal of Vasiliev here and Brandt was much more than respectable, especially in the spectacular dances in the third Act where they both amazed me.) The lead character roles of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were played by Roman Zhurbin and Carlos Lopez. The remainder of the remarkable primary cast included: Zimmi Coker as Amour; Sung Woo Han as Gamache, a rich noble; Jacob Clerico as Lorenzo, Kitri’s father; Zhong-Jing Fang as Mercedes, a street dancer; Calvin Royal III as the matador Espada; and Breanne Granlund and Yoon Jung Seo as the Flower Girls. In Act II, Aleisha Walker and Takumi Miyake were outstanding as the Romani Couple, while Elisabeth Beyer was even more memorable as the Queen of the Dryads. The estimable corps de ballet was characteristically terrific.

The artists deservedly received an enthusiastic ovation.