PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Engelbert Humperdinck — HÄNSEL UND GRETEL (S. Foley Davis, J. Martinson Davis, S. MacLeod, L. Swann, G. Krupp, J. Winslow, A. R. Romero; Greensboro Opera, 2 March 2019)

ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK (1854 – 1921): Hänsel und Gretel (sung in an English translation by Carol Palca Kelly) — Stephanie Foley Davis (Hänsel), Joann Martinson Davis (Gretel), Scott MacLeod (Peter), Lyndsey Swann (Gertrud), Gretchen Krupp (Die Knusperhexe), Jordan Winslow (Sandmännchen), Amber Rose Romero (Taumännchen); Members of Greensboro Youth Chorus; Greensboro Opera Orchestra; Garrett Saake, conductor [David Holley, Producer and Stage Director; Jeff Neubauer, Technical Director and Lighting Designer; Brad Lambert, Scenic Projections Designer; Greensboro Opera, Pauline Theater, Hayworth Fine Arts Center, High Point University, High Point, North Carolina, USA; Saturday, 2 March 2019]

Would any true operaphile question the judgement of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf? In the 126 years since its world première in 1893, Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel has often been dismissed as a confection best suited to the tastes of children and unsophisticated audiences. A setting of the composer’s sister Adelheid Wette’s adaptation of one of the Brüder Grimm’s most popular tales, Hänsel und Gretel aspired to a première in Munich but was ultimately first staged in Weimar’s Hoftheater, where it was conducted with admiration by Richard Strauss. When the opera reached Hamburg a year later, Gustav Mahler wielded the baton with similar approbation. The opera’s first performance at the Wiener Hofoper—today’s Wiener Staatsoper—in 1894 was attended by Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf, both of whom reportedly expressed appreciation for the music. Not one of these illustrious artists who experienced Hänsel und Gretel in its first decade of life was a child, and few observers would belittle their musical sophistication. What did Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, and Wolf hear in Hänsel und Gretel that has eluded subsequent listeners’ ears?

As is true of virtually all operatic queries, the best answers to questions about the evolution of perceptions of Hänsel und Gretel’s musical merits are found in the music. That Humperdinck was an ardent disciple of Richard Wagner is widely known, his work with the older composer including painstakingly copying the autograph score of Parsifal in preparation for that opera’s 1882 première. A dozen years after seeing Hänsel and Gretel come to life in Weimar, Humperdinck visited New York in order to attend the Metropolitan Opera première of the opera on 25 November 1905. That performance was conducted by Alfred Hertz, whose expansive command of Wagner repertory at the MET encompassed the American première of Parsifal. The influence of Wagner on Humperdinck’s musical constitution is abundantly apparent in Hänsel und Gretel, in which there are moments that vividly recall Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Der Ring des Nibelungen. Many are the pages in Humperdinck’s score that look to the future, however. Strauss’s Salome and Die Frau ohne Schatten, Mahler’s symphonies, and Arnold Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder are all indebted to Hänsel und Gretel, engendering a legacy that is at odds with modern trends of regarding the opera as a treacly trifle served as holiday fare and otherwise ignored.

Hänsel und Gretel was indeed conceived primarily as a Christmastide entertainment for children, but are its family-friendly narrative and relative brevity the sole motivations for both London’s Royal Opera House and the MET selecting the opera for their inaugural radio broadcasts of full-length performances in 1923 and 1931? The fusion of ambitious Wagnerian aesthetics with more accessible Germanic folklore and simple tunes that captivated audiences in the final two decades of the Nineteenth Century enabled listeners in the war-ravaged Twentieth Century to figuratively revisit a time before foxholes and takes, a time when predictable dangers lurked in finite settings in which they could be confronted and conquered. Sensitive to the interplay of innocence and menace that permeates Humperdinck’s score, perhaps what Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, and Wolf recognized in the context of Hänsel und Gretel was that being intended to be performed for children does not inevitably beget childishness.

Into the woods: (from left to right) soprano Joann Martinson Davis as Gretel, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Hänsel, and soprano Jordan Winslow as Der Sandmännchen in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

Staged in the elegant Pauline Theater in High Point University’s Hayworth Fine Arts Center, Greensboro Opera’s production of Hänsel und Gretel is a celebration of cooperation amongst Arts institutions in and beyond the Triad. Sung in an English translation by Carol Palca Kelly that was first employed by Minnesota Opera, the performance was the culmination of an initiative to not only expand the reach of Greensboro Opera’s endeavors but also to foster broader community involvement. High Point University faculty member Brad Lambert designed projections that playfully but credibly—credible except when Mutter despaired of shattering the family’s only jug whilst a lovely, seemingly intact pitcher was clearly visible on the mantle behind her—conjured the atmosphere of each scene. His image of dawn breaking in the forest with a burst of pastel colors was particularly striking. Technical director Jeff Neubauer’s lighting designs occasionally muddled the production’s focus, compromising the virtues of its simplicity by complicating the audience’s task of following the opera’s action.

Originally devised for Utah Opera and Symphony, Susan Memmott Allred’s costume designs were both whimsical and practical, emphasizing that Hänsel, Gretel, and their parents are troubled but not defeated by privation. Christian Blackburn’s stage management and Greensboro Opera General and Artistic Director David Holley’s direction were unmistakably influenced by their own work as singers: when the production’s antics were at their busiest, the principals’ vocalism was never impeded. There is more darkness in Hänsel und Gretel than Holley’s staging explored, but the delighted reactions by the many youngsters in the near-capacity audience confirmed the production’s effectiveness.

In loco parentis: soprano Lyndsey Swann as Gertrud (left) and baritone Scott MacLeod as Peter (right) in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

The theater’s orchestra pit could not accommodate the number of musicians that Humperdinck’s orchestrations require, necessitating a reduction in musical forces. The ensemble assembled for this production—pianist Emily Russ, flautist Janet Phillips, oboist Thomas Turanchik, clarinetist Darkson Magrinelli, trumpeter Johammee Romero, and percussionist Erik Schmidt—approached the difficult score with commendable concentration. Their playing of the opera’s Vorspiel was enjoyable despite fleeting problems with intonation and ensemble, and the Hexenritt, enjoyment of which was marred by the audience taking advantage of the scene change to catch up on their conversations, was aptly exhilarating. The cuckoo in the wood sang out beguilingly.

The climactic statement of the Abendsegen theme in the Traumpantomime should rattle the rafters in the manner of Wagner’s orchestral showpieces in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung and ‘Walk to the Paradise Garden’ in Frederick Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet and of course could not do that in this performance, but the music’s impact was enhanced by Michael Job’s choreography of the balletic representation of the fourteen angels’ vigil, which was gracefully performed. The quality of the dancers’ work was complemented by the fine singing of the High Point University students and members of Greensboro Youth Chorus who touchingly and euphoniously portrayed the Kuchenkinder.

Conductor Garrett Saake’s pacing of the performance was characterized by an impressive amalgamation of respect for the score and complete cognizance of the abilities and needs of the personnel at hand. Some conductors either rush through Humperdinck’s score, reducing the piece to a pretentious operetta, or over-accentuate the opera’s Wagnerian passages. Saake avoided both extremes, maintaining dramatic momentum but also allowing the music and the singers to exert their magic without battling illogical tempi. The performance was acculturated to the dimensions of the orchestra and venue but, owing to the conductor’s intelligent leadership, never seemed ‘small.’ It was not as powerful or vibrant as in larger-scaled performances, but Humperdinck’s voice sang uninhibitedly via Saake’s clear-sighted guidance of this Hänsel und Gretel.

At the end of his tether: (from left to right) soprano Joann Martinson Davis as Gretel, mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp as Die Knusperhexe, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Hänsel in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

The courage of this production’s Hänsel and Gretel was tested by a Sandmännchen whose appearance was strangely nightmarish. Her visage disguised by a ghoulish mask, soprano Jordan Winslow’s voice emerged with serene security, floating the music on a stream of silvery tones. Dressed to the nines in a glistening gown and sparkling diadem, the Taumännchen resembled a glamorous storybook princess more than an industrious sprite, but this suited the effervescent singing of soprano Amber Rose Romero. Dispersing her dew in the form of bubbles, a clever device that enchanted the youngest members of the audience, Romero projected her voice with similar iridescence except at the lower end of the compass, where the music moved out of her vocal comfort zone.

It was evident from her introductory utterance that the titular tykes’ mother Gertrud was a woman to be obeyed. Too frequently portrayed as a raving shrew, an interpretation with no real basis in the score or the libretto, this conflicted woman faces the crippling guilt of feeling that she has failed her children. The performance of the rôle by soprano Lyndsey Swann, a heart-wrenching Madame Lidoine in UNCG Opera Theatre’s bold 2016 production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, was a reminder of why mammoth-voiced singers like Rita Hunter and Dame Gwyneth Jones were attracted to the part. Gertrud is the opera’s most overtly Wagnerian character, and Swann supplied the evening’s most heroic singing. Her interactions with Hänsel and Gretel limned the overwhelmed but loving mother’s frustration, expressed in music spanning wide intervals that the soprano navigated intrepidly. Her diction was a casualty of the effort, particularly in the aftermath of breaking the pitcher, but a few obscured words were a small price to pay for the gleaming top B with which Swann heightened her realization of the mother’s desperation and despair. There are echoes of Brünnhilde’s defiance and maturity through suffering in Gertrud’s music, and Swann sang the rôle with sincerity rather than hysterics.

Honey, I’m home: baritone Scott MacLeod as Peter (left) and soprano Lyndsey Swann as Gertrud (right) in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

His first offstage ‘Tra la la la’ established that the defining trait of baritone Scott MacLeod’s Peter was irrepressible optimism. His carefree, confident demeanor notwithstanding, the rôle’s frequent ascents to top E♭s, Es, Fs, and F♯s challenged the singer. The necessity of repeatedly placing notes above the stave undermined his support of the voice’s lower octave. Many productions of Hänsel und Gretel compound the problem of adult singers’ depictions of children by casting singers too old to be believable as the parents of pre-adolescent children, but MacLeod was an appropriately youthful, virile father; perhaps too virile in his description of the potential horrors to which his wife subjected their children by ordering them into the haunted wood in search of strawberries. Peter’s paean to providential retribution for evildoers and the sustaining capacity of faith in the opera’s final scene can be uncomfortably didactic, but this Peter imparted relief rather than evangelism, a wise course for a man more likely to be found in a Biergarten than at Mass. MacLeod’s Peter was heartier of spirit than of voice, but his animated stage presence lent the performance a wonderful propulsive energy.

The rôle of the Knusperhexe, née Rosina Ledkermaul, was created in the opera’s Weimar première by mezzo-soprano Hermine Finck, the third of composer Eugen d’Albert’s six wives, and was sung in the 1894 Vienna production by Marie Lehmann, sister of the famed soprano Lili Lehmann and herself a noted Wagnerian who sang Wellgunde and Waltraute in the first complete Bayreuther Festspiele Ring in 1876. The part was taken in Greensboro Opera’s production by mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp, an alumna of UNCG who was a Grand Finalist in the 2018 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and seems destined to follow the Lehmann sisters into Wagner repertory. Like Hänsel’s and Gretel’s parents, the sorceress who antagonizes them has often been sung by singers more likely to be seen riding motorized scooters than broomsticks. Fair Rosina’s hearing and vision are impaired, intensifying her crone tendencies, but Humperdinck’s music for her calls for anything but a lady with failing faculties. It is fortunate, then, that Krupp’s faculties were on blazing form. This witch needed no spells in order to dominate Hänsel and Gretel: the raw might of her voice exploded like grenades fired into the auditorium. The trills with which Humperdinck seasoned the music are not in a voice as substantial as Krupp’s, but she made laudable efforts at them and gleefully took every high option suggested by the composer. Her top B♭ was literally—and legitimately—show-stopping. It is not easy to evoke sympathy for a woman who converts unsuspecting children into snacks, but Krupp brought a hint of vulnerability to her performance. There was no corresponding weakness in her singing.

Ready, aim, fire: (from left to right) mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp as Die Knusperhexe, soprano Joann Martinson Davis as Gretel, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Hänsel in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]

Many operas are like automobiles. They can be very pretty, valuable, and comfortable, but, without engines, they go nowhere. Not surprisingly, much of the responsibility for the efficacy of a performance of Hänsel und Gretel rests upon the shoulders of its dual engines, the singers who portray the title siblings. Greensboro Opera’s performance had in mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis and soprano Joann Martinson Davis a pair of artists who jump-started the performance with their exuberant singing in the opera’s opening scene and sustained that ebullience to the final bar of their music. Unlike productions that are undermined by the lugubrious work of singers who struggle vocally and dramatically to plausibly portray children, this Hänsel und Gretel was enlivened by depictions of the title characters that exuded unaffected jocularity. Not the sort of chirping soubrette often heard in the rôle, Martinson Davis was a gratifyingly full-voiced Gretel who encountered no problems with the girl’s top notes and trills.

Foley Davis was equally successful as Hänsel. Male singers have depicted boys and young men less persuasively than Foley Davis embodied Hänsel's pluckiness and impetuosity. Her diction was superb throughout the range, and the freedom with which she traversed the part’s two octaves was extraordinary. In the first two acts, she and Martinson Davis charmingly illustrated the siblings’ coltish relationship, and the mezzo-soprano made Hänsel’s sheltering of his sister in the wood unusually moving. Their account of the beloved Abendsegen was sublime. Martinson Davis’s Gretel joyously greeted the morning after a harrowing night in the forest with a sensational top D. The youths’ vigorous gorging on morsels of the Knusperhäuschen contrasted tellingly with their confrontation with the witch. Their cunning prevailing, they rejoiced with stunning unison top B♭s. Many of the world’s opera companies regularly stage Hänsel und Gretel, but few of them offer their audiences Hänsels and Gretels as captivating as Greensboro’s.

It is oversimplification to state that opera is cinema with singing, but, like films, opera productions rely upon savvy direction and dedicated performances by their casts to compellingly tell their stories. The tale of Hänsel and Gretel is too familiar to need complex directorial explication, but it is as true in opera as in any other field that familiarity breeds contempt. Greensboro Opera’s production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel satisfied because it invited the audience to forget the world’s worries for two hours and surrender to the pleasures of fairy-tale spectacle. Calamities persisted beyond the theater’s walls, but, within those walls, beautiful singing transported listeners to a realm in which love overcomes wickedness.

Additional performances of Hänsel und Gretel are scheduled for 8, 9, and 10 March at the Theatre at Well•Spring. Hänsel, Gretel, and Peter will be sung in the 10 March performance by Emily Wolber, Lilla Keith, and Jacob Kato. Please visit Greensboro Opera’s website for more information or click here to purchase tickets.

Brother behind bars: (from left to right) mezzo-soprano Gretchen Krupp as Die Knusperhexe, soprano Joann Martinson Davis, and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Hänsel in Greensboro Opera’s March 2019 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel
[Photograph © by VanderVeen Photographers]