“Two little babes, lost in the woods…” And that’s just the beginning of their troubles in this classic opera by Engelbert Humperdinck (no, not that one).
Is there anything that screams "Christmas" more than a witch who wants to bake and eat helpless children? And yet Engelbert Humperdinck's greatest claim to fame, his opera Hänsel and Gretel, has become a Christmas staple at opera houses around the world (there is, to be fair, a dream sequence where the tots imagine being home with their parents, receiving presents by a cozy fire). I'll let some sociologist or even psychologist analyze the hidden meanings of that phenomenon, but on a personal level, I'd much rather go to the Humperdinck opus than yet another stale retelling of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, for example. Of course that may be the Scrooge in me talking.
I have to wonder what traumatic effects, perhaps spanning several generations, the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales have had on countless children. These unfailingly dark and disturbing pieces hardly seem the proper fare with which to lull children to sleep. Of course, when you think about it, even "harmless" things like the famous lullabye a lot of us had sung to us as kids has that reassuring (?) image of the tree bow breaking and the cribbed child evidently falling to its untimely death. Likewise, the Grimm stories are full of intimations of mortality, and in fact, often more than mere intimations. If Humperdinck's librettist Adelheid Wette (the composer's sister) at least partially softened some of the harder edges of the tale, at its center Hänsel and Gretel is a very disturbing meditation on what it means to be lost and hungry, both literally and figuratively.
Is there anyone unfamiliar with the story of the two misbehaving siblings who are abandoned in the forest by their parents, who are unable (and perhaps, frankly, unwilling) to feed them in a time of famine and trial? Wette partially ameliorates this scenario by having the Mother (Elizabeth Connell) send Hänsel (Angelika Kirchschlager) and Gretel (Diana Damrau) into the forest to fetch berries, but really, it doesn't end up changing the underlying dynamic of the story. The two kids aren't taking their plight very seriously, and Mom has had it up to "here"—and shuffles them off where they'll be out of sight and hopefully soon out of mind. Only when Father (Thomas Allen) arrives home does he remind Mother that there's a wicked Witch (Anja Silja) living in the forest, one who is famous for killing children and baking them into tasty gingerbread treats.
Hansel and Gretel, about to get into trouble due to lack of food and/or videogames.
This elegant but fanciful Royal Opera House production, filmed for television in 2008, is resplendently played and sung by a host of major stars, chief among them conductor Colin Davis. While Davis may initially seem an incongruous choice to handle the music of Wagner's onetime assistant and eager acolyte, he brings a calm assurance and measured approach that perfectly suit Humperdinck's conciseness, to use an adjective Davis himself utilizes to describe the composer. In fact, in comparing teacher (Wagner) to student (Humperdinck), Davis is hilarious in one of the extra featurettes when he states, funnily if not completely correctly, that Hänsel and Gretel is over and done with while the Prelude to Götterdämmerung is barely warming up. But the fact is Humperdinck takes the Wagnerian propensity toward character leitmotifs and pares it down to a less bombastic, overwhelming form that is more instantly accessible than you're likely to experience in The Ring, for example. That said, this is one of the most sumptuously orchestrated pieces in the entire 19th century operatic oeuvre, and a lot of that is obviously owed to Wagner's pervasive influence. You'll notice it right of the bat, basically, with the elegant horn theme, quoting Humperdinck's lovely "Evening Prayer" which closes Act II and is justifiably one of the most popular extracurricular numbers to ever reach beyond the borders of the opera world itself.
But along with the richly burnished orchestration is the vocal music itself, which is often as declamatory as anything found in Wagner, if somehow not quite so overbearing as it can be in Wagner's insistent hands. Mother and The Witch both have far flung moments that could easily be seen and/or heard as musical relatives to similar segments for Wagner's mezzos and sopranos. The bulk of the piece, however, is wrapped around simple ideas, many of them based on folk melodies, and others crafted by Humperdinck to resemble the triadically based, I, IV, and V7 laden world of folk melodies. Gliding over these changes is the elegant mezzo soprano of Kirchschlager, who has been attaining some renown, especially after creating the role of Sophie in the operatic version of Styron's Sophie's Choice. Diana Damrau is every bit her equal, bringing her protean, almost muscular, voice to the role (a voice that famously was able to handle both Queen of the Night and Pamina in a run of Die Zauberflöte). These two wonderful singers offer one of the most languidly gorgeous "Evening Prayer"s in recent memory. Special note should be made of the wonderful children who conclude the piece in the beautiful choral finale with our hero and heroine.
Musicologists may have a passing bit of fun listening to Humperdinck's own minor key reworking of "Bruder Martin," known to Francophiles as "Frère Jacques," something which was done more or less simultaneously with the composition of Hänsel and Gretel, circa 1891-92, and perhaps more famously, in the third movement of Mahler's First Symphony. In fact it's rather fascinating to realize that while Mahler got there first, in 1889, his symphony was originally premiered in 1889, but in Budapest, to a rather tepid reaction. Its first German performance wasn't until October 1893 in Hamburg, almost at exactly the same time Hänsel was getting its first staging, conducted by none other than Richard Strauss, in Weimar. So it may well be that two master composers came up with the same basic idea independently of each other. In a kind of funny twist to it all, guess who conducted the second performance of Hänsel? I'll give you a clue—his first name was Gustav.
The production design here is wonderfully fanciful, with a host of really interesting elements. The kids' homefront is like a funhouse version of a domicile, with askew angles and wild colors. The forest set is absolutely stunning, consisting of a large painted backdrop into which a "window" of sorts opens, allowing various flats to pass by. It's a really interesting visual approach and brings a substantial amount of wonder to these scenes. The Witch's home is also quite wonderful, with a freezer full of frozen delicacies (those would be other children, by the way), and some big threatening ovens with what appear to be real flames inside. Costumes and makeup are also first rate, with The Sandman a standout, if the brief view of the Witch's plaster breasts less so.
This may be the 19th century version of A Nightmare Before Christmas, but under the fairy tale trappings is some cogent commentary on what it feels like to not be in control of your surroundings, and in fact not to even be sure of what your surroundings really are. Humperdinck clothes the depth of the terror in a candy cane musical vocabulary, but that in fact only tends to heighten the opera's impact. This may in fact not be the most "Christmasy" piece out there (I guess in fact The Nutcracker still takes the holiday cake in that regard), but this opera has been an enduring gift to music theater lovers for generations, and this loving production has its own abundant gifts to offer modern audiences.
This is another sterling 1080i/AVC live television presentation making its way to Blu-ray disc courtesy of Opus Arte. This is a splendidly colorful production that nonetheless is bathed in darker hues a lot of the time, aptly mimicking its psychological underpinnings, and the BD's superior resolution allows even slight glimmers of color to shine through. While the opening scenes offer a fairly tame palette, at least by comparison with the rest of the opera, there's still an astounding amount of detail—you can almost count the piles on Gretel's sock, for instance, in the opening bedroom scene. Once the piece moves into the forest scenes, we're awash in some of the most gorgeous blues and greens you can imagine, and the palette, while subdued in a sort of nighttime ambience, pops magnificently. The Witch sequence, while a bit lighter than the forest scenes, also sports excellent hue and shadings, tending toward the red spectrum. Black levels and contrast are both superb throughout the production.
Hänsel and Gretel offers two PCM soundtracks, a 2.0 and 5.1, both at 48 kHz, with the 2.0 streaming at 2.3 Mbps and the 5.1 at a hefty 6.9 Mbps. Both of these tracks are excellent, with perfect liquidity and brilliant fidelity. There was less compressed sound on the 2.0 mix than I've experienced with other folddowns, but there was not much of a hall ambience, as is to be expected. Of course the 5.1 track presents more of a live performance spatial atmosphere, and there's also a surprising amount of low end throughout the 5.1 mix. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at the "blockbuster summer film" explosive levels toward the end of the opera when the Witch meets her fate. It's one of the more astounding uses of LFE I can remember in an opera. Both the orchestral forces and the singing are very well balanced, with no mix issues to report. The brass sounds especially resplendent throughout the 5.1 track, beautifully articulated and with just the right amount of sonic punch to cut through the more delicate strings and winds.
A wonderful nine minute interview with Davis is the best supplement, full of his wry humor and keen insight into the music. There's also an 11 minute "making of" featurette offering behind the scenes footage intercut with interviews with the production crew. The usual narrated synopsis and cast gallery (this time with "live" footage showing each actor being made up in their respective roles), as well as the typically insightful essay in the insert booklet, round out the extras.
Its traditional connection to Christmas tangential at best, Hänsel and Gretel is nonetheless a charming and at times disarmingly if lovably dark (in a Tim Burton-ish sort of way) trip through the tormented childhood psyche. Humperdinck's music is unfailingly lovely and superbly well crafted, and this excellent Royal Opera House production makes the most of all these elements in a spectacular production.
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