Don Quixote

This heavily abridged recording focuses on our romantic hero's most salient adventures, realistically omitting the vast dialectic mass of the novel. The listener begins to get a feel for Cervantes' novelistic brilliance, but misses the full effect of his mordant satire of contemporary social and literary pretensions. De Souza's reading from the late seventeenth-century translation is natural and confident; his pacing is perfect. He deftly executes Cervantes' characterizations, infusing the characters with the requisite humor or grave solemnity. Exquisite reprises of music from the Spanish Renaissance lighten the density of the prose and heighten the historical ambiance, further enriching this first-rate performance. B.M.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine