Never was a knight…

A singspiel told in vignettes told through journeys, reveries, ramblings and transformation from Cervantes’s Don Quixote for tenor and ensemble

(2016-17)

Never was a knight was written for and is dedicated to Joe Dan Harper, with great admiration and affection. It is for solo tenor and seven instrumentalists who do a lot more than just play their instruments. An accompanying video was created by the artist/musician/thinker Jennifer Coates. The piece lasts 75 minutes. It was premiered by Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, conducted by Matilda Hofman.

Don Quixote is a masterfully messy, rich, inescapable tale. Given its substantial length, many do not make it past Book I. The way it is written allows us to pick it up, read a chapter or two, put it away for months (or years), and return whenever to the point where one left off or maybe just at a point chosen at random.

Never was a knight isn't strictly an opera. The thing it most closely resembles is a singspiel (German for sung-spoken). These works, developed during the Classical period, incorporate a fair amount of spoken word alternating with the singing, with plots that contain elements of fantasy and comedy. My setting of the story is told from the point of view of Don Quixote, as he lays near death in bed surrounded by books, half-remembering, half-hallucinating the life that has brought him to this point – the moment before his is about to end. Don Quixote (the tenor) is often both reanimated and confused when he recalls a memory. He hears voices, he sees things – the memories seem as real as when the events took place.

My work starts with Don Quixote dying, and is broken into vignettes, arias, instrumental interludes and recitatives. Each vignette recalls an important event or character (Sancho Panza, the young servant boy) from his life, all the while focusing on his poignant longing he has for Dona Dulcinea, the love he never meets. His is an unreconciled life. His quest is over the moment he finds a place to stop and remain and read.