BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO HANSEL AND GRETEL

The good guys: Hansel, Gretel, The Mother, The Father, Sandman, and Dew Fairy

The bad guy: The Witch (we saw that coming)

Opera Vocab

Opera: a dramatic work in one or more acts, set to music for singers and instrumentalists

Composer: a person who writes the music for opera (and they’re not all dead!)

Libretto: the text of an opera

Voice Type:soprano (highest), mezzosoprano, contralto, countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass (lowest)

Conductor: a person who conducts an orchestra, chorus, opera company, or other musical group in a performance

Bravo(a): an Italian term used to celebrate a standout performance

Quickfire Synopsis

The mother returns home to discover Hansel and Gretel have not finished their chores. The punishment? Go in search of strawberries in a very haunted forest, home of The Witch. The children quickly find the fruit but do not return home; their parents realize that this was a poor decision. Alone in the forest, Hansel and Gretel, greeted by the Sandman, are put into a protective sleep. Upon waking, they happen upon a gingerbread house and, naturally, begin eating it. They are (unsurprisingly) discovered by the aforementioned and forewarned Witch who traps them in hopes of plumping them up to eat. Hansel and Gretel catch on to her tricks and, while checking the oven, they push her in. The Witch is baked, the parents arrive, the children are safe, and they all live happily ever after.

HANSEL AND GRETEL FUN FACTS!

• Composer Engelbert Humperdinck, not to be confused with the British popstar by the same name, began work on Hansel and Gretel in 1890.

• The opera’s premiere performance was conducted by Richard Strauss.

• Humperdinck served as the music tutor to Richard Wagner’s son, Siegfried.

• Hansel and Gretel is based on the fairytale by the Brothers Grimm.

OPERA TIP: Don’t talk to your seat neighbor during the performance. We know that aria was a banger—say it with

Act One

Hansel and Gretel are at home, working to earn some money for their poor family: Hansel makes brooms and Gretel is mending things. The children are hungry and distracted, especially Hansel. Gretel tells her brother that their mother has hinted that she expects to sell enough brooms to buy food. With the prospect of something for supper, both children are more animated.

Their mother Gertrude returns, angry at how little they have done while she was gone. Unable to conceal her irritation, she knocks the pitcher of milk onto the fl oor, and dinner is lost. Despondent, she sends the children into the forest to fi nd something to eat. Their father Peter returns from a successful day selling brooms, with baskets full of food. When Peter notices that the children aren’t there, Gertrude explains that she sent them into the forest. Frightened, Peter tells his wife that he heard the townspeople speak of a witch living in the woods, who turns children into gingerbread by burning them alive in her oven. Both parents rush into the forest to search for the children.

Hansel and Gretel gather mushrooms and berries in the forest. Unable to resist playing, however, Hansel falls on their baskets, destroying them and crushing their food. As night falls, the forest becomes scarier, and the children realize that they are lost. Every noise and shadow frightens the children. The Sandman appears, dusting their eyes with sand, causing them to grow tired. The children say their evening prayers and fall asleep together beneath the trees.

Act Two

An orchestral interlude introduces a new day. The Dew Fairy arrives to awaken Hansel and Gretel. The children are groggy at fi rst, but delight overcomes them when they discover a gingerbread house decorated with every sort of candy imaginable. As they nibble at bits of the house, the Witch approaches, fi rst inviting them inside gently. When the children refuse, the Witch uses her black magic to keep them there. It becomes frighteningly clear to the children that they are on the evening’s menu. The Witch feeds Hansel, casting a spell that causes him to grow until he is plump enough to roast. While the Witch fl ies around the house excitedly on her broomstick, Gretel uses one of the Witch’s spells to enable Hansel to move. When the Witch orders Gretel to follow Hansel into the oven, the girl pretends not to know how and asks the Witch to show her. Leaning into the oven, the Witch falls for the children’s trap: they shove her inside. All of the Witch’s spells are broken, and the children who had been baked to make the gingerbread house return to life. Hansel and Gretel’s courage and bravery are celebrated by the other children. Peter and Gertrude come upon the scene and are happily reunited with Hansel and Gretel. Everybody celebrates the children’s triumph.

Tdo Performance History

The company has performed Hansel and Gretel three times in the following seasons: 1990/1991, 1995/1996, and 2002/2003.

Intermission

Fairytales make great opera. They have simple plots where ordinary people confront impossible odds with extraordinary consequences. Their purpose is to offer a kind of self-help faith; you too can overcome terrible obstacles and embrace real hope for a happily ever after. Most of them emerged from the Dark Ages when pagan superstition informed a broadly animist belief that the world was operated by unknowable, supernatural forces which organized and animated the material universe. Everything had a soul. Most of these stories had characters with simple names like Jack or Mother and tended to happen once upon a time, long ago and far away. This vagueness of place, time and protagonist invites readers to imagine themselves into the story and to follow anyone who earns their sympathy be it witch, prince, child or frog— depending on where the listener is in the journey of life and what they might have suffered. A boy following Jack and the Beanstalk might well, for example, find himself with a very different takeaway than his mother…or an agriculturist, for that matter.

And while we’re on the subject of mothers, Hansel and Gretel—the fairytale, (not the opera) features a pretty horrific one, intent on infanticide, as well as some form of pastry-enabled cannibalism. Freudian-leaning shrinkers have suggested that the plethora of evil stepmoms in the literature might have helped children break through the parental hold and self-actualize.

In reimagining the story for a late 19th Century audience of youthful Christians however, Adelheid Wette, Humperdinck’s sister, the opera’s librettist and its originator, thought a mean mom was a bad idea and shifted the reason for her occasional outbursts from murderous frenzy to the inadequate feelings of a well-meaning woman, impoverished, starving, and destitute, just trying get her rambunctious kids to shut-up and do something useful. Rather than sending them to get lost and die in the forest, she just sends them out to find strawberries. Unable to feed them, she prays to God for help. Later, when they are lost in the woods, one of the most beautiful instrumental interludes in all of opera underscores the appearance of angels, as if to answer.

Revisiting the opera two World Wars and many inventions later, in a more pluralistically-aware society, Richard Sparks and I decided to bring back the story’s more pagan, less denominational genesis and repopulated the forest with mythical souls.

And now—whoever you are and wherever you are in the journey of life, please fall into this ever-evolving fairytale and find yourself in Humperdinck’s musical masterpiece!

—Doug Fitch, director