Abstract. The article is devoted to the evolution of the image of Don Quixote in the musical theater in XIX and XX centuries. At first the image of the hero of the novel was revealed mainly in a comic vein (ballet by L.Minkus, 1869). Starting from of Jules Massenet's Opera “Don Quichotte” (1910) the angle changed to the sublime, heroic, even tragic character. Massenet had also filled the image of Don Quixote by lyrical and philosophical issues. This trend has not been immediately adopted in the musical theatre of the twentieth century: opera by M. de Falla «El Retablo de Maese Pedro» (1923) was still written in a parody tradition. However, the Massenet's interpretation of the image of the hero has been gradually established as a tradition of musical theatre («Le chevalier errant» by Jacques Ibert, 1936; «Don Quixote» by N.Nabokov — J. Balanchine, 1965, etc.).