Striking Set Design and Strong Singing Elevate ‘Hansel and Gretel’ at the Royal Opera House

Every culture in the world has its folklore; within this category, fairy tales have their home. While details may vary across countries, there are noticeably similar traits. The same tropes crop up over and over again: Baba Yaga, the Russian witch, is not thoroughly dissimilar to the witch found in the Brothers Grimm fairy tales in that she is wicked in nature, she communes with the supernatural and she intends to eat children. Fairy tales predate literature and the written word: like Homeric epics, they were originally transmitted through the oral tradition. Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp discovered that all fairy tales have the same structure, with a few variations.

After Freud, the psychoanalysts and Jungian theorists of 20th-century Vienna returned to fairy tales as well as the literary outputs of ancient Greece and Rome to find archetypes and examples for their examinations of the human psyche. This, if anything, shows that even people of the modern age, with our self-proclaimed sophistication and new technologies, are inclined to view fairy tales as something innate. Fairy tale scholar Jack Zipe believes that “we have been attracted to fairy tales because they are survival stories with hope.” Thus, our cultural history is established. The tale of Hansel and Gretel is instructive as well as entertaining with its story of the capture and cannibalism of children by a witch. It emphasizes the devastating effects poverty can have on a family and focuses on how to survive in the worst conditions. Hansel and Gretel may refer to the Great Famine of 1315-17 in Europe, which was the most devastating in a series of famines, though the version modern audiences know is from the Brothers Grimm’s fairytale book of 1812, Kinder- und Hausmärchen.

Engelbert Humperdinck’s operatic take on Hansel and Gretel, currently on at London’s Royal Opera House, is a visual and auditory triumph. The most beautiful and moving aria must be the children singing the Abendsegen (Evening Prayer, in English). Lost and alone in the deep woods, Hansel and Gretel, cast out of their family home by their mother in a temper, pray that they will be safe from harm during the night. In most productions, fourteen angels take to the stage during the song; here, they are conspicuously absent. “When at night I go to sleep, fourteen angels watch do keep,” the lyrics proclaim. In this show, the angels are replaced by characters from folklore who frolic through the forest as the two children sleep: Snow White, Red Riding Hood, a wolf, Cinderella and Rapunzel gambol across the stage. It is sad not to have the angels, but perhaps director Anthony McDonald wanted the folkloric characters for the sake of the children in the audience.

I was disappointed that Snow White’s costume was entirely based on her Disney incarnation, from the Snow White film of 1937, with the dark blue bodice and yellow skirt. What is the good of having a costume designer if you unimaginatively copy Disney? But this production’s scenery is mesmerizing and highly evocative: trees of the forest are on stage throughout, in light and in shadow, and very lifelike. Moths and beetles climb the walls of the opera house proscenium. The Witch’s house, usually a kind of elaborate peasant hut with an exterior composed of candies and chocolates to entice children, is this time based architecturally on the house of Norman Bates’ mother in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. It’s eerie and menacing, though it is somewhat of an anachronism when you consider that the story is set in central Europe in the Middle Ages. It did not follow that children Hansel and Gretel would be inclined to eat gingerbread from the steps of a house with so menacing an appearance, and yet they devoured it undeterred.

Hansel, a trouser role, was performed in sporting fashion by American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey, while Gretel was performed chirpily by American soprano Heidi Stober. The Witch was sung by British mezzo-soprano Carole Wilson, whose demeanor, enhanced by a bald head and cat-like step, was truly terrifying even for adults. All were in good voice and acted their parts with gusto. I did feel, however, that Hansel and Gretel acted older than their characters’ ages—more pre-teen than under-10s in terms of their physicality. My praise must go to Irish soprano Sarah Brady, who was the Sandman. I felt a frisson down the back of my neck as she sang, and the audience appeared to be similarly enraptured. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House was truly in fine form, with Humperdinck’s melodies resounding gloriously throughout the auditorium. They were led by Lithuanian conductor Giedrė Šlekytė, who has conducted Hänsel und Gretel previously at the Oper Leipzig and who stated in the program that her favorite aspects of the opera are the harmony and richness of counterpoint; of Humperdinck’s orchestration, she most admires the never-ending melodic and harmonic richness, “obviously inspired by Richard Wagner, who was Humperdinck’s idol.”

The chorus of rescued children who appear in the closing scenes brought tears to the eyes of the audience. Rendered blind by the Witch’s wicked spell, they were clad in rags and sporting sunglasses, recalling for the audience both the children’s rhyme Three Blind Mice and also perhaps the television program on French TV in which veteran French singer Serge Gainsbourg is serenaded by a choir of school boys singing his own hit song Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M’en Vais (I’ve Come By to Tell You That I’m Leaving), all dressed as Serge with grayed hair, sunglasses, little glasses of liqueur and fake cigarettes. To see the children of the chorus thus imperiled was very moving; moving also is the scene in which Hansel and Gretel meet their parents once again, to joyous musical refrains from Humperdinck, whose musical inspirations as a composer also included Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream as well as Richard Strauss’ early tone poems like Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration). Hansel and Gretel will always be popular, given its message of triumph over adversity, the strength of the familial bond and, most importantly, the exquisite beauty of its melodies. Bravi tutti.

Hansel and Gretel is at London’s Royal Opera House through January 9, 2025.