Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse (1743)

Dons everywhere you look!  Where will it end?!?  As I've noted, it's sort of difficult to find non-Rameau French operas from this time period, so let's appreciate what we get.

Have I complained about how hard amazon makes it to find opera dvds that may not be that well-known?  You'll find this is you just type "Boismortier," but the title will do you no good, because the site calls it "Don Quixote at the Duchess," which even aside from the bad translation is simply not a thing that exists, and so nobody would search for it.  Yeesh.

So yes, obviously, this is based on an episode from Don Quixote--I don't remember the book well enough to tell whether it's a specific episode or just an "in the spirit of" thing.  Certainly, there are episodes of nobles fucking with Quixote for laffs, which is what this is.  It's really not a very heavily-plotted thing.

The music is great, Rameau-ish stuff--one might wish there were more of it, but you can't complain about what's here.  The other fact that must be noted, however, is that--per the notes--only the musical parts of this are extant; the connective tissue is lost.  So, they improvised their own material.  Some of it is kind of what you'd expect it to have been like, but especially in the latter half, it gets a bit flakey.  There's a lot with the characters, the duke especially, interacting with the conductor, Hervé Niquet, who, it must be allowed, has some pretty decent comic chops.  But some of this stuff, I dunno.  All this stuff was conceived and written by a French comedy duo called Shirley and Dino, and both of them appear in non-singing roles, him as the duke and her as a supposed Spanish singer who is going to perform in tribute to Cervantes.  Did I say "non-singing?"  Well, except that they both do sing, sort of, in deliberately terrible fashion (not over Boismortier's music, thankfully), which I am given to understand is a common part of their act.  And I dunno; I suppose you have to accept a thing like this for what it is, but I couldn't help wish for more opera and less dicking around.

Still, you could do worse, if you're willing to not take anything too seriously.  Chantal Santon Jeffery stands out as the duchess in question.  Once again, I will say: either watch it, or don't!