San Francisco Classical Voice

It is worth looking at the original story for a moment, and the circumstances of the opera's inception, to see just how far afield this production has strayed. The fable goes as follows: two hungry, poor children are sent out by their disconsolate mother to collect berries, but they get lost in the forest. They encounter a witch, who is known to enchant children and then bake them into large edibles. She ensnares Hansel and Gretel as they nibble at her gingerbread house, but they outwit her by learning her magic spell and then pushing her into the oven. Everyone is saved. Mother and father eventually find them, and with a last ‘hopsasa !” all go off to live happily ever after.

The opera was initiated when Adeheid Wette, Humperdinck's sister, asked him to set four songs based on the Grimm's fairytale "Hansel and Gretel" for her children to sing. From there it grew to a play with music, for home performances, and finally into a complete music drama. The whole was born in innocence.

Humperdinck studied composition with Wagner, from whom he learned a largeness and grandiosity of style. In this opera, innocent folk tunes ride mountains of elegant orchestration, adding drama to the naïve songs. The most beautiful effect is his setting of the evening prayer, sung by the two children. Richard Strauss considered the opera a masterpiece, as did other great musicians, most notably Mahler and von KaraJanuary It was performed in 72 theaters in the first year after its premier and has remained a mainstay.

The SF production starts in a grey sparse room, the children dressed in grey, the choreography spastic and demented. In trying to get the director's take on it, one wonders if the children were just released from a insane asylum, or if perhaps the whole story has been reconfigured to be a nightmare about two hungry mental patients. This conclusion appears to be confirmed when, after sending the children off, the mother takes out a bottle of pills saying ”I'm finished” and looks like she is about to commit suicide. Her husband arrives just in the nick.

In the next scene, the children wander about in another grey room, supposedly representing a forest, and the gentle “sand fairy” turns into a terrifying spook. The angels, who are there to protect them while they sleep, are winged pigs with chef's hats. What is going on? And what's with the Mick Jagger tongue? Well, that's the gingerbread house atop it! It now looks like a total send up of the opera, with defiling and nasty bits superposed. A systematic misuse of the work of art to further a director's lack of true and deep creativity.

Though enchantment was lacking on the stage, the superb musical performances were compensation. Nicholas McGegan, conducting without a baton, elicited the most poetic performance from the San Fancisco Opera orchestra to date. He was sensitive to the stage-orchestra balance, and beguiled us with subtlety, grace, and refinement. The man is a wizard in baroque style, and now we can delight in his brilliant approach to romantic music! Hansel and Gretel (Sara Fulgoni and Catrin Wyn-Davies) both sang excellently, Gertrude, their mother, (Mary Lloyd-Davies) was very convincing. Most outstanding was Graham Clark, the witch, hilariously costumed in a proper pleated skirt and black top with pearls, a Dame Edna coiffure, bustling about in his/her institutional-looking kitchen. David Okerlund sang the part of the father with great vocal beauty. Greta Feeney's (Sandman/Dew Fairy) sparkling vocal presence was a real asset.

On the way out I asked a little boy what he thought about the performance, he silently gave it a thumbs down.