“La ruta de Don Quijote", zarzuela by Rafael Rodríguez Albert: Recovery and premiere of the work almost 100 years after its composition

Abstract

In March 1930, the imminent premiere of the “fantasía lírica” La ruta de Don Quijote, music by Rafael Rodríguez Albert (1902-1979) and libretto by Javier Burgos Rizzoli, Alfonso Hernández Catá and Joaquín Candela Ardid, was announced in the Alicante press in a free adaptation of the Cervantes novel. But it was neither on this occasion nor on others that were offered later that the work could be premiered. It is only worth mentioning the performance of an instrumental fragment of it in 1960 in a concert version and by the Madrid Symphony Orchestra (Orquesta Arbós), conducted by Vicente Spiteri: the pantomime of “Las bodas de Camacho”, inserted at the end of the second act of the piece.

Through this article we will analyze this interesting work, its libretto, its music and its authors, especially Rafael Rodríguez Albert —who spent part of his childhood and adolescence in La Mancha— as well as the frustrated history of its premiere, which could finally be verified almost one hundred years after its composition, after intense prior work of musical recovery.