Don Quijote

Interactive App based on the puppet opera by Manuel de Falla and Cervantes

Don Quixote and the puppeteer is an interactive App for children and adults, based on

El Retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show), a very short opera for puppets composed by Manuel de Falla, Spain's most important composer of the 20th century. It is based on an episode in which Don Quixote attends a puppet show about chivalrous heroes and a princess taken captive by the Moors. He gets so drawn into the action that he jumps in to rescue the damsel in distress, only to destroy Master Peter’s puppet theater in the process.

Miguel de Cervantes is known as the inventor of fiction because he wrote the first modern novel Don Quixote. A soldier and adventurer, Cervantes always loved the theater and weaved poetry and drama into his masterpiece.

Manuel de Falla, whose music for the stage, ballets and operas are among the greatest masterpieces of the first half of the 20th century, loved puppets since his early childhood, so in writing this opera, he tenaciously explored both his own memories of youth, as well as the music of his beloved Andalusia. De Falla was a passionate advocate for the preservation of traditional Andalusian folk particularly Flamenco and this passion was shared by his young friend Federico Garcia Lorca as they collaborated unwaveringly in giving Flamenco music its rightful place in the culture of Spain.

El Retablo is a concise, funny masterpiece that imagines a new direction for Spanish music in the 20th Century, in opposition to the grandeur and pomposity of German music of the likes of Wagner and Mahler. In Winaretta Singer, the American patron of modern music and her fashionable Parisian Salon, Falla found a supporter and a muse, along with Satie, Poulenc and many artists of the Belle Époque.

The App features an irresistible performance by Tinglado Theater one of Mexico’s premiere puppet ensembles. A matchless performance by Boston’s Unitas Ensemble and Metropolitan Opera baritone Héctor Vázquez along with international tenor Jose Luis Ordóñez and soprano Marisa Canales, conducted by Benjamín Juárez Echenique.

Join the experts. Watch especially filmed insights into the musical, historical and political context of this masterpiece, from Charlemagne to the arts between the world wars. Renowned scholars from Boston University, Universidad de Granada, Madrid’s Universidad Complutense and other academic and cultural institutions in Mexico, the U.S. and Spain, share captivating information on every facet of the work.

Experience a puppet in Augmented Reality! The endearing puppet narrator known as the Trujaman leaps into action in an amazing and playful AR experience.

The music score is a masterwork of craftsmanship and imagination: smart orchestration, reframing of medieval and baroque melodies combined with engaging storytelling. In sum, a literal gem that amuses children and music lovers alike and keeps revealing new facets of de Falla’s creativity and depth at every turn.