Don Quixote (1869)

Don Quixote is a three-act ballet based on scenes from Miguel de Cervantes' classic work Don Quixote de la Mancha. It was choreographed by Marius Petipa to Ludwig Minkus' music and first performed by Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet on December 26, 1869. Petipa and Minkus reworked the ballet into a more intricate and extended version in five acts and eleven scenes for the Mariinsky Ballet, which premiered on November 21, 1871 at St. Petersburg's Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre.

The epic tale follows Don Quixote, a fanciful self-appointed knight, and his companion Sancho Panza, Quixote's more grounded counterpart. The ballet concludes with one of the most renowned pas de deux (duets) in the canon, a dance between the characters Kitri and Basilio.

Don Quixote was first performed outside of Russia by Anna Pavlova's company in 1924, in a truncated version of Gorsky's 1902 staging, though the full-length work was not performed for many years. Today, many companies all around the world have produced the ballet in various variations, and it is regarded as one of the great ballet masterpieces.