Beware the Witch

Hänsel und Gretel
Royal Opera House

Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen
Ardente Opera

The Royal Opera’s new production of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, has two completely different casts and two conductors. For that matter, it has two producers, too, but they are both involved in the same production: Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, with their usual attendant designers, etc. As usual, too, the production this pair has come up with is in most respects unremarkable, until Act III. Act I is set in the children’s bedroom, a diagonal affair with a two-dimensional forest surrounding it. Act II is the two dimensional forest itself, with a recess where one sees more trees; but there isn’t much atmosphere. Act III can wait.

The children (this is a review only of the first cast) sing gloriously, look and behave less convincingly. In fact Angelika Kirchschlager’s Hänsel is more plausibly boyish than Diana Damrau’s Gretel is girlish. Both of them seem to think that children spend their time stomping around and making extravagant gestures, to demonstrate their high spirits. Their parents are brilliant, though almost no one’s diction is clear, apart from Thomas Allen’s; his Father has a superbly lubricated voice. And one of the rare directorial touches is to have the parents, decrepit as they are, getting down to some marital action — children aren’t the only ones to want fun. Then Dad wonders about the kids, and Mum has to button up her blouse. Elizabeth Connell sings unstintedly, as always. What tiny roles they have, though! It’s the most amateurish thing about the text.

Act II is, as always, carried by its fabulous music. Colin Davis, whose recording of the opera (with jigsaw included) shows how much he adores the score, was sometimes too loving, a bit ponderous, quite lacking in spontaneity.