It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical teleplay I, Don Quixote , which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes and his 17th-century novel Don Quixote. It tells the story of the "mad" knight Don Quixote as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition.
Wasserman complained repeatedly about people taking the work as a musical version of Don Quixote. The original Broadway production ran for 2, performances and won five Tony Awards , including Best Musical.
The musical has been revived four times on Broadway, becoming one of the most enduring works of musical theatre. The principal song, " The Impossible Dream ", became a standard. This original telecast starred Lee J. The play was broadcast live on November 9, , with an estimated audience of 20 million. Years after this television broadcast and after the original teleplay had been unsuccessfully optioned as a non-musical Broadway play, director Albert Marre called Wasserman and suggested that he turn his play into a musical.
Mitch Leigh was selected as composer, with orchestrations by Carlyle W. Unusually for the time, this show was scored for an orchestra with no violins or other traditional orchestral stringed instruments apart from a double bass, instead making heavier use of brass, woodwinds, percussion and utilizing flamenco guitars as the only stringed instruments of any sort. The original lyricist of the musical was poet W. Auden , but his lyrics were discarded, some of them considered too overtly satiric and biting, attacking the bourgeois audience at times.
Auden's lyrics were replaced by those of Joe Darion. The musical first played at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut in The show moved to Broadway to the Martin Beck Theatre on March 20, , then to the Eden Theatre on March 3, , and finally to the Mark Hellinger Theatre on May 26, for its last month, a total original Broadway run of 2, performances. Musical staging and direction were by Albert Marre, choreography was by Jack Cole , and Howard Bay was the scenic and lighting designer, with costumes by Bay and Patton Campbell.
