Don Quixote

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is staged at the Ambra Jovinelli Theater directed by Roberto Aldorasi, Alessio Boni and Marcello Prayer. As main actors there are Alessio Boni in the role of the hidalgo and the Turkish actress Serra Yılmaz, Ferzan Ozpetek's muse, in the role of the squire Sancho Panza.

The novel, published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615 under the title of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, is considered not only as the most important work of the Spanish Siglo de Oro, but also a masterpiece of world literature, an example of the first modern novel, in which both elements of the picaresque and of the epic-chivalrous genres are mixed.

At the center of the show is that "lucid madness" of the hidalgo who, a passionate reader of chivalrous novels and tied to vanished ideals, cannot distinguish what is true from what is not, fighting for a heroic cause. Don Quixote is therefore a work that celebrates misunderstood heroes, that is, those who, through dreams and imagination, have gone against the tide of social conventions and for this reason have been considered crazy, both in literature and in life. Among these we can include the literary figure of the Shakespearean Hamlet coeval of Don Quixote, or the brilliant astronomer Galileo Galilei.

Thanks to the show we can relive all the charm of this mythical figure of the dreamer knight, which Cervantes' fantasy has made immortal.

Photo credits: courtesy of Ambra Jovinelli Theater official site