The Impossible Dream (Man of La Mancha)

Man of La Mancha grew out of Dale Wasserman's 1959 television play I, Don Quixote and opened at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre in New York on 22 November 1965, running for 2,328 performances. Mitch Leigh wrote the music and Joe Darion the lyrics; Leigh, who had studied with Hindemith, gave the score a Spanish accent, using flamenco rhythms, guitars and no violins at all. The frame is Cervantes in a prison cell, defending himself before his fellow inmates by acting out the story of his knight, with the other prisoners taking the parts.