HUMPERDINCK : HÄNSEL UND GRETEL

Radio New Zealand Concert network 
Sunday 29th of January 2017 at 6 - 8.20 pm
Sunday 1st of February 2015 at 6 - 8.35 pm
Sunday 13th of July 2014 at 6 - 8 pm
Sunday 29th of December 2013 at 3.03-5 pm
Sunday 12th of February 2012 at 3.03 pm
Sunday 23rd of October 2011 at 3.03 pm
Sunday 24th of January 2010 at 3 pm
Sunday 27th of January 2008 at 3 pm


INTRODUCTION
COMPOSER
SYNOPSIS
STORY (Grimm)
LIBRETTO
2017
HUMPERDINCK: Hansel & Gretel, an opera in three acts
An English translation of the classic tale from the Brothers Grimm. The siblings Hansel and Gretel get lost in the forest and are caught by an evil old woman who puts a spell on them and intends to bake them in her magic oven (This is a recording from the past; Philip Langridge died in March 2010, aged 70.)
Hänsel..............................Alice Coote
Gretel...............................Christine Schäfer
Gertrude...........................Rosalind Plowright
The Witch........................Philip Langridge
Peter.................................Alan Held
Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus & Orch/Vladimir Jurowski2015
HUMPERDINCK: Hansel and Gretel, an opera in three acts
An English translation of the opera from the classic tale of the Brothers Grimm. The siblings Hansel and Gretel get lost in the forest and are caught by an evil old woman who puts a spell on them and intends to bake them in her magic oven
Peter................................. Dwayne Croft
Gertrud............................. Michaela Martens
Hansel.............................. Jennifer Johnson Cano
Gretel............................... Heidi Stober
Gingerbread Witch.......... Robert Brubaker
Sandman........................... Carolyn Sproule
Dew Fairy......................... Ying Fang
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Andrew Davis

2014
HUMPERDINCK: Hansel & Gretel, an opera in three acts
Father............................... Brian Mulligan
Mother.............................. Julie Makerov
Hansel.............................. Elizabeth DeShong
Gretel............................... Maria Kanyova
Gingerbread Witch.......... Jill Grove
Lyric Opera Chorus & Orch/Ward Stare

My Dear Opera-bairns

This time we have a children's opera to enchant us, namely Hänsel und Gretel, by Engelbert Humperdinck (the original, please do not accept substitutes, this is the Engelbert with no g-sound). It was first performed on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss, who declared it to be a masterpiece.

My only experience of it in a theatre (not an opera house) was a performance at London University. It was lovely to share it with children in the audience, but the boy sitting next to me had a runny nose and no handkerchief, and so he sniffled all through it. Do you see now why I think it is better to stay at home to watch opera? In Paradise operas are performed all the time, and nobody ever coughs, sneezes, or sniffles. And this is not an opera to be sniffed at.

The production I have seen on videotape is by Elijah Moshinsky, from the Sydney Opera House (and I now own it, since the local public library discarded it).

This romantic opera sends me into raptures and ruptures (of tear ducts), and transports of delight (not a reference to the broomstick the witch rides), and ecstatic swooning.

It is a Wagnerian music-drama constructed from one of the Grimm fairy-tales, divided into three acts (but lasting less than two hours). It has its version of the ride of the Valkyries, the Hexenritt, for a single anthropophagous witch, who loves children (loves them to death, we might say) and puts them into her umu, and bakes them into gingerbread. Apparently she never gets round to actually eating any of them, because in the end they are released from her spells and brought back to life, and she is baked into an oversized rock cake in her own oven. It looks like another case of undeserved persecution of "weird" wicca women who were burned to death for their pains in experimenting with genetic engineering and otherwise advancing medical science with their potions and cauldron-concoctions.

Young Hans (Hänsel, played by a woman) and little Greta (Gretel) live with their indigent parents in a cottage. Father is a besom-binder (that is, a broom-maker). The children are home alone, getting up to mischief instead of doing housework (in the Sydney version it is homework).

They do a dance (hands klapp klapp klapp, feet tapp tapp tapp, and yours will do likewise).

The story is modernized by Moshinsky, up to a point. The jug of milk that gets broken is a bottle, and not a carton. Hänsel has a yoyo. Mother has curlers in her hair and a cigarette in her mouth. And when Dad brings home the bacon (literally) he also has a jar of ---mite in the bag (put your favourite yeast extract in the space, not forgetting Pro-).

But before Dad arrives, the children have been sent out into the forest to pick wild strawberries. The witch will make her pitch for them, he says, after he finds out where they have gone. When darkness descends the kids have scoffed down the strawberries, and will have to sleep out. The cuckoo-echo scares them. The sandman gives them a sedative. Fourteen guardian angels come to watch over them in the night, and we see their pleasant dreams, to the accompaniment of a magnificent orchestral interlude (Humperdinck played the bells for Parsifal in Bayreuth, so this Dream Pantomime music is very Wagnerian). In the morning the Dew-Fairy gives them their wake-up-call, and washes all the sand out of their eyes. Then they go off to have their adventure with the witch (she's wicked).

Sometimes the mother and the witch are played by the same woman. Not in the Sydney version, but there the mother is a nasty stepmother, and the real mother appears to the bairns in their dream, and is conducted to her celestial rest by a couple of angelic bouncers.

The NY Metropera version has a big bunch of cooks preparing a vast repast for their dreams.

If you want to know how Humperdinck made the Grimm tale less grim,  go to  BACKGROUND and be told to go away, as the Metropera archives are now closed to intruders like us. So try this for the original tale:   STORY (Grimm)
Humperdinck certainly toned down the Grimm-ness of the tale, but eventually made up for this in his Königskinder, in which the royal brother and sister starve and freeze to death.

Sunday 29th of December 2013 at 3.03-5 pm
HUMPERDINCK: Hansel & Gretel, an opera in three acts
Hansel............................... Brigitte Fassbaender
Gretel................................ Lucia Popp
Father............................... Walter Berry
Mother.............................. Julia Hamari
The Nibblewitch............... Anny Schlemm
Sandman........................... Norma Burrows
Dew Fairy......................... Edita Gruberova
Vienna Boys' Choir, Vienna Phil/Georg Solti
 (Decca 421 111) (1978)
REVIEW (9/10)

Sunday 12th of February 2012 at 3.03 pm
HUMPERDINCK: Hansel & Gretel, an opera in three acts
An English translation of the classic tale from the Brothers Grimm. The siblings Hansel and Gretel get lost in the forest and are caught by an evil old woman who puts a spell on them and intends to bake them in her magic oven
Peter............................. Dwayne Croft
Gertrud......................... Michaela Martens
Hansel........................... Alice Coote
Gretel............................ Aleksandra Kurzak
Witch............................ Robert Brubaker
Sandman............................Jennifer Johnson Cano
Dew Fairy............................Ashley Emerson
Metropolitan Opera Chorus, Children's Chorus & Orch/Robin Ticciati


Sunday 23rd of October 2011 at 3.03 pm 
HUMPERDINCK: Hansel & Gretel, an opera in 3 acts
Hansel........................... Jennifer Larmore
Gretel............................ Rebecca Evans
Gertrude....................... Rosalind Plowright
Peter............................. Robert Hayward
The Witch..................... Jane Henschel
Dew Fairy..................... Sarah Tynan
Sandman....................... Diana Montague
New London Children's Choir, Philharmonia/Charles Mackerras
(Chandos CHAN 3143)
 This is a commercial recording, and a good one, given that Mackerras is in charge; but the greatest is still Karajan's with the Philharmonia orchestra, and the two Elisabeths (Grümmer and Schwarzkopf), which I obtained long ago through the world Record Club.


Sunday 24th of January 2010 at 3 pm 

In the New York production, the witch is impersonated by the tenor Philip Langridge (married to Ann Murray, and they have both played this part); he died shortly after. The children's dream is about food (understandable under the circumstances), with 14 chef-cooks coming to them instead of angels.

HUMPERDINCK: Hansel and Gretel, an opera in three acts
The classic tale from the Brothers Grimm
Gretel............................ Miah Persson
Hansel........................... Angelika Kirchschlager
Gertrud......................... Rosalind Plowright
Peter............................. Dwayne Croft
Sandman....................... Jennifer Johnson
Dew Fairy..................... Erin Morley
Witch............................ Philip Langridge
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Fabio Luisi

These useful links are no longer linked.
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE
ANALYSIS