This is a strange and unique work. The Princesse de Polignac (an American woman who was also the heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune) possessed a puppet theater and commissioned various composers to write new works for it. Falla responded with a remarkably self-referential work drawn from the pages of Cervantes. Here Don Quixote visits an inn. To the misfortune of everyone around him, the entertainment at the inn is a tale of chivalry: a puppet troupe portrays the plight of a gentle lady who is captured and imprisoned by the Moors, and rescued ultimately by a knight-errant. Before the puppet can rescue her, Don Quixote becomes captivated by the story, believes it to be real, and, deciding he is the knight to rescue her, takes up arms himself against the evil puppets, wreaking much destruction and quite spoiling the evening for everyone else.

What makes this work really strange is that it is not only the puppets in the play who are portrayed by the sewing-machine Princess's puppets—all the "real" people in the story (Quixote, Sancho Panza, the innkeeper, Maestro Pedro the puppeteer, and the boy assistant who reads the narration of the puppet play) are also all puppets themselves! They are a larger and more realistic bunch of puppets than the ones in the chivalrous drama. Thus, the real audience watches a group of puppets watching another group of puppets.

To complement this scheme Falla created a sound world unlike that of any other composition. With bold drum rhythms, swirling double-reed figurations, florid yet dignified Spanish melodies, and rapid harpsichord-accompanied recitative from the boy narrator, he suggests both the dusty inn where Quixote watches the play and the orange-tree scented Moorish courtyard where the distressed damsel is held.

In all, this is a comical work of dry wit and drier (nearly triple-sec) sounds, perhaps more likely to appeal to the connoisseur than the beginning listener, but a fine and exceptionally imaginative piece.

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