Michael Tanner

Undiluted pleasure

<strong>Hansel und Gretel</strong><br /> <em>Glyndebourne</em> <strong>La bohème</strong><br /> <em>Royal Opera House</em>

issue 26 July 2008

Hansel und Gretel
Glyndebourne

La bohème
Royal Opera House

The two operas I saw last week were premièred just over two years apart, Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel at Christmas 1893, Puccini’s La Bohème in February 1896. Both of them deal with deprivation and poverty and very different life-destroying forces, and ways of coping with them.

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