Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel

 (2007)

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray delivers stunning video and audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
No synopsis for Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel.

For more about Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel and the Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray release, see the Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray Review

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray Review

If you're hungry for a different kind of 'Hansel and Gretel,' this might just be your cup of tea. But where's the wicked witch?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 20, 2010

Fairy tales often clad rather deep and troubling ruminations in the bright, storybook colors and ostensibly simple plots and characters that belie their profundity. Probably everyone around is familiar with at least one version of Hänsel und Gretel, the veritable fable of two hungry children lost in the woods who have the misfortune to happen upon a gingerbread house and the evil witch who utilizes it as a snare. Even in its most basic form Hänsel und Gretel is one of the more troubling fairy tales in the childhood canon, with parents evidently willing to cast their children aside when they're unable to feed them. Add to that the witch's predilection for baking kids into tasty snacks and you have the makings of any youngster's worst nightmare. When German composer Engelbert Humperdinck adapted the story into his most famous piece, the three act opera Hänsel und Gretel, he added a whole, almost Dickensian, meditation on the suffering of the lower classes, beset as they were with inadequate food and lodging. And once again, just like the best fairy tale writers, Humperdinck himself clad his piece in bold primary "colors" of major keys, folksong like melodies, and harmonies largely built around the foundation stones of easily accessible music, tonics, subdominants and dominants. And yet that same troubling aspect of the original fairy tale is never far from the surface in Humperdinck's creation, and it's brought perhaps even more to the forefront in this interesting, if not completely successful, 2007 production from Dessau, Germany's Anhaltisches Theater.

Sabine Noack as Hansel.

Stage director Johannes Felsenstein gets right to the point at the beginning of all three acts of Hänsel und Gretel when he offers a montage of film clips of the glowering lower classes struggling for equality and a scrap of bread to eat with some sad archival footage. There's no dearth of scenes of crying, forelorn children in these segments, just to make everything perfectly clear. When we enter the somewhat ramshackle, yet candy-cane colored world of our titular children, it's both ironic and strangely unsettling. Sabine Noack as Hänsel and Cornelia Marschall as Gretel admirably capture the sibling rivalry of these two hungry souls, kids who are instantly cowed into submission not only by the vagaries of their fate, but by the oppressive attitudes of their parents, Gertrud (Alexandra Petersamer) and Peter (Ludmil Kuntschew).

What sets this Hänsel und Gretel apart, not only from the other Blu-ray of the opera which is currently available, but also every other live production I've ever seen, is Felsenstein's decision to make the unfolding of the drama what is evidently a fantasy playing out in the kids' heads. Dreams and illusions have obviously always been part and parcel of Hänsel und Gretel's makeup, notably the Christmas sequence, which has made this disquieting work a rather unlikely staple of Holiday entertainment fare for generations. But Felsenstein here takes that idea to a whole new level, so that children play the piece almost entirely (at least for the first two acts) in a unit set which serves as both their hovel and then, in Act II, as a sort of illusory forest. The technique is odd, to say the least, and it becomes even odder in Act III, when Hänsel und Gretel seem to find themselves magically transported to the home environment of their dreams, where instead of being captured by an evil witch, they enact the drama with dolls, and their own father (now a velvet smoking jacketed well to do man about town) dons a scarf and "becomes" the Witch. This makes the threat that the children are under strangely distant and frankly removes a visceral element from the opera that I'm not sure Humperdinck would have approved. When everything is a dream, or an "act," as it were, it makes the hardscrabble reality of having to fight for your food just that: an act, a pretense, a chimera that can be forgotten as soon as Humperdinck's lovely children's chorale ends the piece. Is that really what Hänsel und Gretel is about?

There are some nice staging touches to be had in this production, however, and the audience (which sounds like it's comprised largely of gaggle-eyed children) eats it up (pun intended). When the unit set is suddenly bathed in dark and moody blues as it becomes a "forest," it lends a magical quality to the proceedings which is quite entrancing. Later, the Sandman (Viktorija Kaminskaite) shows up as a Vegas showgirl, complete with top hat and skimpy outfit, and does a sort of Bob Fosse dance routine as she lures the children into dreamland. In fact a great deal of this staging is imbued with a hallucinatory quality, which is certainly in keeping with Humperdinck's conception. I just have to wonder if it's taken a mite too far, especially in the third act, which really should be a nightmare, but which here plays out as a surreal dream.

Singing and playing in this offering are uniformly strong. Noack's strong and lilting mezzo blends beautifully with Marschall's slightly more strident soprano, and their Evening Prayer at the close of Act II is very well handled. Humperdinck's writing also includes some rather long (for operatic standards) instrumental interludes, and conductor Markus L. Frank leads the Anhaltische Philharmonic through its paces very well here. The orchestra is warm and solid, with that burnished glow which seems endemic to German ensembles. The children's choir which closes out the piece are similarly good, though the staging here is rather odd, with many of them facing the stage from in front of the pit, so that it's hard to actually see them in their moment of glory.

This rethinking of Hänsel und Gretel certainly doesn't rise to the egregious levels of discontinuity that I so frequently decry in modern reinterpretations of classic works. And I think director Felsenstein's heart is certainly in the right place. But what is a Hänsel und Gretel without its Witch? That really is a nightmare.

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray, Video Quality

 

Hänsel und Gretel arrives on Blu-ray from ArtHaus Musik with a really nice looking AVC encoded 1080i 1.78:1 image. Though Act I doesn't offer much in the way of a variegated palette (as befits the drab surroundings in which the children are ensconced), once we get into the "dreamworld", starting with the astounding lighting change which heralds their "journey" to the forest, things perk up considerably. The opera offers a wealth of beautifully saturated colors from this point onward, with some especially wonderfully rich blues and reds. Detail throughout the three acts is similarly strong. Close-ups of the children reveal all sorts of details, and in fact in their prayer scene, you can make out some ragged fingernails. A lot of the first two acts are rather dark in terms of stage lighting, but the Blu-ray offers exceptional contrast and good, solidly consistent black levels. There were no instances of artifacting that I noticed.

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray, Audio Quality

 

Humperdinck's sweet, slightly subversive score receives a beautifully rich recording with the DTS HD-MA 7.1 track provided here. This is a score stuffed to the gills with quotes and adaptations of folksongs and folksong like melodies, and this recording makes the most of Humperdinck's luscious interior lines, where some of these treasures lay hidden. The orchestra is especially rich sounding on this recording, with some wonderfully burnished brass work leading the way. While directionality is most obvious when singers are either very far right or left, the centrally placed vocals all sound clear and crisp. There are occasional balance issues, notably with Petersamer, who is just a tad hard to hear some of the time, but overall this is a well modulated recording, with excellent fidelity and good dynamic range. The 2.0 fold down, which I spot checked, actually sounds quite good, especially since so many of the vocals tend to be located in the center, so those of you without a surround system will do quite well with this option.

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras

 

Aside from trailers for other ArtHaus offerings, and the expected insert booklet essay, there are no extras to be had.

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation

 

Felsenstein seems to want to have it both ways with his Hänsel und Gretel: he starts each act out with a stark reminder of what being poor and underfed means, but then he subverts that thesis by making it all "a dream." This is nonetheless a well sung and especially a well played Hänsel und Gretel. If it doesn't quite hit the bull's eye, it's an interesting take on a piece which has a decidedly unsettling subliminal quality.

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