Part chocolate factory, part Psycho house of horror, the witch’s hideaway in the Royal Opera’s Hansel and Gretel oozes grisly allure. The front steps may be made of ganache but a window drips with blood. Humperdinck’s fairytale opera is thought of as a children’s favourite, a first step into opera. The ROH revival of this 2018 staging, by director-designer Antony McDonald, runs throughout the school holidays. In the tradition of European fairy stories, the underlying themes are dark: poverty, drunkenness, child abuse. Humperdinck’s 1893 version – to a libretto by his sister, Adelheid Wette, based on the Grimm brothers – softens terror with the addition of angels, kindly Sandman and obliging Dew Fairy, creating a gentler, God-loving romance.
These polarities cause a dilemma for any director. Some crank up the ghoulish and sinister elements – more fun for grownups – only to find the work topples under the weight of expectation. McDonald has remained faithful to the spirit of the original, with painterly designs straight out of a pop-up book. Inside a remote wooden shack, Hansel and Gretel (Anna Stéphany and Anna Devin) argue with their desperate mother (Susan Bickley), whose worst punishment is to make them pick strawberries. In the forest, the lost children encounter familiar Disney characters and cuddly-furry beasts. The Witch (Rosie Aldridge), who doesn’t appear until Act 3, meets her end in a vat of chocolate instead of a roaring furnace.
The work’s enduring power lies in Humperdinck’s score, winningly performed by the ROH orchestra under the incisive baton of conductor Mark Wigglesworth. Glowing with brass chorales, surging climaxes and delicate instrumental solos, it has the character of Wagner without the angst. (Humperdinck was under the spell of the composer, whom he had assisted in Bayreuth on Parsifal.) Sung in workable English, with a characterful cast, the staging has immediacy and surprise. But is it too dull or slow for a modern child? I checked out the view of my cool friend Matthew, 10. It was his first opera, a birthday treat. He loved every moment, especially the children dancing on the table and the witch’s cauldron collapsing at the end. Let Mattie be your guide.
At Wigmore Hall, director-violinist Adrian Butterfield led his London Handel Players in works for Advent and Christmas written by JS Bach, from 1715 to the 1740s. Five terrific singers – sopranos Hilary Cronin and Jessica Cale, countertenor Hugh Cutting, tenor Charles Daniels and bass Jerome Knox – moved seamlessly between solos, duets and ambitious choruses. From the sorrowful Süsser Trost, mein Jesus kommt, BWV 151, a lullaby-like plea for comfort with flute obbligato (Rachel Brown), to the exultant Gloria in excelsis Deo, BWV 191, this first half of the programme was rich in itself.
Then came the Magnificat in D, BWV 243, complete with the four interpolations for Christmas Day (Butterfield combined elements of the two versions Bach wrote; the work has a complicated backstory). Impossible to imagine what the congregation in Leipzig must have felt on first hearing this masterly song of praise. Explosive from the start, rampant in its word painting, bristling with cryptograms, codes and harmonic symmetry, racing from low to high, high to low, the entire work is a summation of joy. It does draw breath, as in the tender alto-tenor duet, beautifully sung by the youthful, expansive Cutting and the experienced, rock-like Daniels. Violins, violas and flutes spun a softly undulating web around them. All ends with a triumph of trumpets and drums, singers and players projecting for dear life, with a jubilation that spread to the cheering audience.
The baroque church of St John’s Smith Square (1728) was built in exactly the period Bach was writing his weekly cantatas in Leipzig. His Christmas Oratorio is an annual high point of the SJSS festive season, but another mighty work, in part inspired by Bach, as well as Indian ragas, hurtled, roared and whispered round its grand spaces last week. Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur (1936), one of the greatest organ feats of the 20th century, here played by Roger Sayer, consists of nine meditations on the birth of Jesus. In one episode, shepherds’ pipes are heard, according to the composer, under a starlit canopy of blue-violet, red, gold and silver. The work’s religious, symbolic and compositional principles, as well as its stained-glass colour scheme, are beyond summary. I’ll stick with Messiaen’s own view: that the immense technical complexities allow “the heart to overflow freely”. It did here.
Star ratings (out of five)
Hansel and Gretel ★★★★
London Handel Players ★★★★★
La Nativité du Seigneur ★★★★
