Opera Review: The Gingerbread Cure

Opera Manhattan mounts Hansel & Gretel.

by Paul Pelkonen.

A German 10-pfennig stamp with Hansel, Gretel and the Witch.

On Tuesday night, Opera Manhattan offered a charming modest version of Engelbert Humperdinck's holiday classic Hansel und Gretel at the Acorn Theater on W. 42nd Street. It was a refreshing, traditional take on the German opera, performed in an "interactive" English translation.

Bryce Smith's company is offering a welcome alternative to the big-budget version being staged further uptown. This is Hansel on a shoestring, with music director Jennifer Peterson playing the entire score at an onstage baby grand. Well, not the entire score. The famous Overture and Witch's Ride were cut, and the opera's three acts were condensed to 80 minutes and played without a brake. 

Directed by New York City Opera veteran Beth Greenberg, this was a spare, but enchanting production. The set consisted of projected images, a small army of fake white Christmas trees and a few props. Three young opera-goers linked arms and became the gingerbread house. They were paid for their work in chocolate gelt, lollys and real gingerbread. 

Mezzo Sahoko Sato and soprano Megan Candio made an engaging, energetic pair of siblings as Hansel and Gretel. Ms. Sato brought a tomboy attitude and exaggerated mugging. Ms. Candio is a remarkably flexable dancer with a supple soprano instrument. Her choreographed moves while under the Witch's control were a welcome comic surprise. 

Heather Roberts played the Witch relatively straight, engaging in evil cackles and  vocal effects. This mezzo has an impressive range from the bottom of her chest voice all the way to the very top. In a humane touch, she was not baked into ginger-bread, but run offstage by Gretel. At the end, the Witch was pelted with "snowballs": white shower puffs thrown from the audience.

Nathan Fuhrman offered a firm, resonant presence as Peter, even with his long build-up to the Witch's Ride proving anticlimactic. This singer's deep voice offered comfort and strength in this part, especially in the opera's closing bars. As Gertrude, Korin Kormick displayed a powerful voice that may be too big for the cozy Acorn Theater. 

Elana Gleason doubled as the Sandman and Dew Fair. She also served as host of the performance, wrangling the kids on and off the stage and keeping the young audience members involved in the opera. In the finale (which was missing the usual chorus of children), she returned to the stage and sang the third part, filling out the harmony and helping to bring this performance to a satisfying close.

Hansel & Gretel runs through January 1. More information at the official website of Opera Manhattan.


Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Opera Review: Let Them Eat...Each Other

Hansel and Gretel at the Met.
by Paul Pelkonen

Julia Child-killer. Robert Brubaker (r.) as the Witch menaces Gretel in
Act III of Hansel and Gretel. Photo by Marty Sohl © 2011 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera marketing department touts Hansel and Gretel as its holiday offering, with a fairy-tale story geared toward children. It promotes images of friendly chefs, and a whimsical (fish-headed) waiter serving up dishes to two hungry tykes lost in the woods. But in choosing to revive Richard Jones''s food-obsessed production (originally seen at the Welsh National Opera in 1999) the company has missed the point of the work.

Opera Review: Can it Core a Apple?

The Met's new Hansel and Gretel

Ooh! Cake! The hell-mouth from Hansel and Gretel.
Photo by Ken Howard © 2007 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Hansel and Gretel (which is actually imported from the Welsh National Opera) tosses out the traditional gingerbread staging in favor of an edgy surreal fairy-tale world that owes debts to Salvador Dali and Saw.

The controversial staging, however, is overwhelmed by the quality of this first-rate cast and the Met's always-reliable orchestra. Everything in Richard Jones' staging is fixated on food, from the opening scene where the children are starving in a bare Honeymooners kitchen to the "dream ballet" where the angels descend to earth in the form of portly chefs, each bearing a delicacy on a silver charger. (As far as we could tell from our Family Circle perspective, none of them were leftover props from Salome.)

Visually, this ain't subtle. The Witch's Ride is represented as a huge, lipless, screaming mouth--a nightmare image that recalls Edvard Munch's paintings as well as the Rolling Stones' Andy Warhol logo. The forest is a giant, menacing dining room tricked out in green leafy wallpaper with an antler-chandelier straight out of Twin Peaks. And the dream ballet is led, inexplicably by a half-man-half-sardine wearing a very nice tuxedo.

The conducting and vocal performances were anchored by Alan Titus' sturdy Father and Philip Langridge's bring-down-the-house turn as the Witch. This great British tenor looks and acts like he's stepped out of a John Waters film.

However, one wonders why the Met decided to cast Christine Schäfer, a talented German singer for a production staged in English? She sings well opposite the boorish, rambunctious Hansel of Alice Coote, but sounds uncomfortable in another language. Vladimir Jurowski led a strong, Wagnerian performance from the Met pit. The enthusiasm of the brass section proved an even greater menace to the singers than the Witch.