This ain’t no fairy tale
San Francisco Opera’s Christmas offering, Englebert Humperdinck’s 1893 Hansel and Gretel, ain’t no traditional fairy tale. This co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden plays up serious social themes illuminated by Herr Humperdinck in a libretto by Adelheid Wette, the composer’s sister. It loosely follows the breadcrumb-dropping plot of the Grimm brothers’ familiar children’s story. But, many elements are changed. No stepmother; breadcrumb trails abandoned; gone, the fattening cage with sticking out chicken bones instead of fingers; all dumped.
The opera is all the better for that, providing meat for adults and Christmas candy for children. The world economy, and Germany’s with it, had slumped in 1873. Twenty per cent of German companies had gone bust and recovery did not come until well into the 1890s. It was for a bleak world of widespread hardship and frequent domestic shortages that Herr Humperdinck’s sparkling jewel of an opera was cut.
From the get-go the hardship theme is to the fore. Antony McDonald, the British opera and set designer, greets the audience with a transparent curtain depicting a sylvan German valley, but the idyll is unsettled by a slightly rickety wooden house. During the overture subtly illuminated images of life within the house at mealtimes flash from a time of plenty – kitchen table groaning with goodies, father carving a fat chicken – to destitution and starvation.
Adelheid Wette took a serious interest in the politics of child exploitation and the often-tense relations between parents and children at the time. Hence, the archetypal wicked stepmother is dumped for parents, who are directly responsible for their children’s welfare. No excuses for third party ill treatment. Yet, the children are put to work in the home, cleaning and broom repairing, as were their counterparts, in German industry and domestic service.
Hansel and Gretel’s mum and dad are careless of their welfare, to the point of being abusive. Father is a drunken lecher. The point is reinforced throughout that it is only in the context of the home that these conflicts can be resolved. This is festive entertainment with a sharp edge. Charles Dickens made many of the same points in Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol.
As the curtain rises, the feverish scraping of plates for that last taste of soup and the sight of a cupboard stripped of groceries leave the audience in no doubt that mum, dad and the two kids are having a hard time of it.
Huge effort went into making the set genuinely representative of a late 19th century Germany home – down to sourcing cans and packets of food in period. Calling producers, everywhere: my wife is a hoarder. If anyone out there is setting an opera in Britain in the 1970s, do get in touch. I can help.
Father, sung by Alfred Walker bass-baritone, is a brush-maker and a neat sleight of this production’s hand is to have him making brooms instead – a cue for the witch, who appears in her candy house in Act III. Mother, mezzo soprano, Michaela Martins is a drudge – and oscillates between concern and total disregard for her children. Her affection for her husband is turned on only when the brooms sell and he returns home flush with cash.
Another recent major production, with which this Hansel and Gretel goes head to head in the USA, is a much-praised Metropolitan Opera/Welsh National Opera staging by David Jones from 2007, revived in 2017. The difference in approach is stark. I like the Met/ENO version less.
In the Jones production the focus was on food and farce. And there was little attempt to make the children … well … like children. Not least, because in 2007 Alice Coote, an outstanding British mezzo soprano, was cast as Hansel. She has a voice that can rise to any occasion, but Ms Coote as a permanently edgy little boy? Ridiculous.
That mistake was avoided in San Francisco by casting Grammy award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke as Hansel and Heidi Stober, an American soprano from Wisconsin, as Gretel. They managed to play wonderfully off each other while crossing the emotional spectrum – from playfulness, through mischief, fear and ultimately resolution in the face of danger.
Act II takes place in the forest. In the Met production it was a room framed in thick foliage. The children fell asleep on the floor under an incongruous dining room table. The ROH/San Francisco production takes great care to depict spruce trees, common in Germany, allowing space for a beautifully choreographed dance sequence, replete with ironic weapon wielding animals determined to get their own back on hunters. Where the Met was contrived, San Francisco was convincing, but far from humourless.
The original 1893 version has the children’s dreams populated by ministering angels. Instead, choreographer Lucy Burge delivered an enchanting dance sequence of Grimm fairy tale characters. They all pitch in; Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel with 20 foot hair, Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella, Snow White … and the dance ends with them assembling around the children, reading of themselves in a huge original Grimm edition, circa 1812, the children asleep at their feet. Clever touch.
In contrast, for the dream sequence the Met chose a clever-dick procession of fat cooks, topped with massive grinning masks and towering toques blanches, a threatening band of Ku Klux Chefs, heaping ridiculous goodies onto that incongruous table, assisted by a six foot cod as head waiter. Off the point entirely.
The opera was sung in English, not German as originally at Covent Garden. I could not find a credit anywhere, so I assume that the David Pountney English translation used in the earlier Met/WNO production had simply been half-inched. Good work!
On to Act III and the witch’s house. Oh, that house. Bates Hotel meets Hershey Bar. It was subtly evil, that is if a 20-foot table knife embedded in the roof can be called subtle – and did I mention the lightning-flash-illuminated upstairs window running in blood – maybe jam? – or the enormous cherry on the apex, which lit up to show that Witchy was at home and ready for basting business?
The audience was left wondering why the children wouldn’t run a mile. Instead, they started nibbling at the chocolate gutters – and the rest of the “housey”.
And, what about Witchy? I wonder why it is accepted that the role should always be performed by a man. There is no shortage of scary women around these days. Macbeth’s witches are all crones. Robert Brubaker, an American baritone turned tenor, did his level best. Great voice, but short in the creepy witch department. The bald head didn’t do much to add to the illusion.
There was one smart production innovation. The custom is to bung the witch in the oven and watch her through an opaque door as she crisps, like watching a horror movie on an old 405-line TV. Here, the witch was pushed into a bubbling vat of chocolate. Half the audience felt envious. She/he ended up as an enormous cookie, revealed when the vat broke open before the finale. More dramatic than any old oven.
The conductor was Christopher Franklin, an American with an international diary, focused on Italy. He wrought some beautiful music from the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and was not averse to vigorous hand pointing at cast members to ensure seamless entries and exits.
The cast included Ashley Dixon, mezzo-soprano, as The Sandman and Natalie Image, soprano, as the Dew Fairy. Both participate in San Francisco Opera’s Adler Fellowship programme for young artists. The programme is a crucible for budding talent across the USA. They acquitted themselves as seasoned professionals and demonstrated the importance of allowing aspiring singers an opportunity to perform in main stage productions.
Engelbert Humperdinck is a one hit opera wonder. Point of clarification – for some. He is NOT Arnold George Dorsey, the middle of the road English balladeer of 1967 Please, Release Me fame, who – unfathomably – thought it a good idea to snitch his name.
Herr Humperdinck may have written only one opera, but he was no lightweight composer. Richard Strauss, no less, admired his work to the point of conducting the premiere of Hansel and Gretel. He wrote about a dozen other stage works, none regularly performed. A trawl of the IMSLP Score registry reveals only 18 works in total.
Lack of output should not detract from the top quality of Hansel and Gretel, often perceived as a lightweight bauble. After all, Beethoven managed only Fidelio in the opera department. It is a luscious combination of Wagnerian symphonic music and German folk, including that damned ear-worm tune, Abendsegen, in Act II, which, with sonorous French horns, also leads off the overture.
The Abendsegen duet, sung by the two children in the forest was heart melting. Lutherans may have claimed to hate beauty in their churches, but they made up for it in music.
The witch is dead, and a cohort of cooked children, sung by the San Francisco Girls and Boys Choruses, return to life, staggering out of the pantry. They are blind. But they regain their sight when touched fondly by Hansel and Gretel. There is a point being made here, a criticism of soulless state institutions. Think Oliver Twist’s workhouse. Human kindness is an essential ingredient of healing. Perhaps it’s a message that four-year-olds asleep on the floor of Britain’s NHS hospitals will understand.
The parents turn up to greet the children. Dad has had his fortunes restored, as there has been quantitative easing in the broom industry. Mum’s scolding days are over. The audience leaves in good spirits, but with both Abendsegen and Humperdinck’s morality tale ringing in its ears. Hard on the heels of last year’s It’s a Wonderful Life, this Hansel and Gretel was another seasonal triumph for San Francisco Opera. Merry Christmas!