Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Academy of Music, 22 November 2024

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Images: Craig Fuller

Hänsel – Anna-Helena Maclachlan
Gretel – Binny Supin Yang
Peter – Conrad Cahatterton
Gertrud – Ella Orehek-Coddington
Witch – Konstantinos Akritides
Sandman – Grace Hope-Gill
Dew Fairy – Caroline Blair

Director – Jack Furness
Designs – Alex Berry
Lighting – Ben Ormerod
Choreography – Rebecca Meltzer

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Royal Academy Opera Chorus

Johann Stuckenbruck (conductor)

Working as I do in education, I am probably more accustomed to trigger warnings, above all to what they are not, than many. It really does no harm to signpost what might be ahead to those who are vulnerable so that they can prepare and, in extremis, make alternative arrangements. Warnings are not and never have been a matter of avoiding, let alone prohibiting, presentation and discussion of difficult subjects; rather, they can offer a framework for that very presentation and discussion. In practice, we learn from experience, including from mistakes, and I have never found students difficult or unsupportive in difficult cases; we work together, and that is how it should be. That said, I was a little surprised when checking the Royal Academy of Music’s website for the starting time of Hänsel und Gretel to see a trigger warning: ‘This production contains scenes of a violent nature which some audience members may find upsetting, including the use of stage blood. Therefore, we recommend that audiences are aged 13+’. Not so long into this production, by Jack Furness, I understood why, although the age recommendation and general circumlocution seemed to be missing the point. Yes, there was a bit of stage blood, which might have led the ultra-squeamish (I count myself among them) at times to avert their eyes, but it was surely the sexual nature of the violence that presented the potential problem and might have ‘triggered’ audience members of any age. 

Hänsel (Anna-Helena Maclachlan)

This, then, was a serious Hänsel, such as many of us have always maintained should be the case. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the best previous example I had seen of such a production – and still, I think, the best all round – was that of Liam Steel for another of the London conservatoires, the Royal College of Music in 2016. It tackled head on issues of familial child abuse, without abandoning the story ‘itself’; far from it. Furness’s staging was probably more ambitious still, for better and for worse. It opened up a good number of questions, yet, at least (for me) on a first viewing, was sometimes a little confusing in their presentation, making it difficult (again, at least for me) to establish what had been intended.   

The setting was that of a fundamentalist (Amish-like) community, in which abuse was clearly rife, tapping into current Handmaid’s Tale and broader US fascist-Protestant preoccupations. Gretel dreamed, it seemed, of escape—and finally achieved it, though at what cost? Disturbingly, her sexual awakening, was not only represented and paralleled in various stage representations – her first period coinciding with the Dream Pantomime and concluding with chastisement from her father; serial sculpting of gashes; the Dew Fairy as alluring flower; the red cellophane membrane of the Witch’s gingerbread house – but also entwined with abuse at the hands of her father. So far, so distressing, her apparent assault being part of the dream, though presumably rooted in reality, but the role of starving children around was more unclear, more sometimes proving less. Learned behaviour was clearly exhibited between Hänsel and Gretel themselves, she first trying on her knowledge with her brother, he traumatised and only later attempting it, now to her horror, for himself. The mother had clearly opted for a policy of least resistance. Quite why, then, one would have a ‘larger than life’ cabaret-Witch en travestie was unclear; it seemed an odd thing for that abused girl to fantasise about and frankly jarred, though nonetheless it retained an imprint. 

Witch (Konstantinos Akritides), Gretel (Binny Supin Yang), Hänsel 

Johann Stuckenbruck’s conducting, impressively, seemed very much of a piece with the seriousness of the production. It began very slowly and, especially during the first and second acts, seemed inclined to highlight colder, disturbing aspects of the score, some of which I had never really imagined existed—or to come close to inventing them in tandem with Derek Clark’s orchestral reduction. There were occasions when the small Royal Academy Sinfonia was out of sorts, indeed out of tune, which highlighted the impression, but Stuckenbruck restored order on each occasion, and the greater freedom with which the third act proceeded further signalled a musicodramatic strategy; here, at last, Gretel awakened, was some Schwung. Clark’s reduction bothered me more than these arrangements tend to. There are good, pragmatic reasons for using them, though we need to be a little wary in the broader scheme of things, lest they ‘cost-effectively’ supplant the real thing, which here is truly a thing of wonder, its Wagnerian scale (in one sense) crucial to it. Some instances that sounded straightforwardly odd, yet I was also bothered in a more positive, dramatic way by its coldness: not unlike, then, the rest of the show. 

Our Hänsel and Gretel gave multifaceted performances, founded on highly accomplished acting. Binny Supin Yang’s facial expressions as Gretel were key to delineation of this realm of nightmares. Vocally, she came into her own, appropriately enough, in the third act, whilst also offering an animated performance earlier on. Anna-Helena Maclachlan’s Hänsel was properly awkward, all the more so in this setting, benefiting from a beautiful, unforced mezzo and signal attention to words and their meaning. A commanding Father in Conrad Chatterton and an intriguingly withdrawn, albeit finely sung, Mother in Ella Orehek-Coddington vocally completed the family, augmented by an alert team of choral extras. Konstantinos Akritides’s star turn as the Witch was despatched with vigour and verve; whether the concept were misjudged was a question for the production, not the performer. Grace Hope-Hill and Caroline Blair both impressed in their roles too, as Sandman and Dew Fairy. Whatever my reservations, then, this was a Hänsel to provoke insight and disturbance, which is as it should be.  

Hänsel und Gretel, Deutsche Oper, 4 January 2020

Images from the 1997 premiere: © Bettina Stöß

Peter – Noel Bouley

Gertrud – Heidi Melton

Hänsel – Jana Kurucová

Gretel – Alexandra Hutton

Witch – Andrew Dickinson

Sandman, Dew Fairy – Flurina Stucki

Andreas Homoki (director)

Wolfgang Gussmann (designs)

Silke Sense (revival director)

Children’s Chorus (chorus director: Christian Lindhorst) of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

A lovely way to open my operatic year: a new—to me—production of an opera of which I never tire, Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. Andreas Homoki’s Deutsche Oper production was first seen in 1997 and has clearly done sterling service for a mixed audience of children and adults. (There are matinee performances intended more specifically for families, but there were plenty of well-behaved—often far more so than the adults—children on the evening I attended.) There are clearly limits to what will be thought of as appropriate for such a production. In no sense does Homoki’s team, including revival director, Silke Sense, come close to what remains for me the finest exploration of the work’s dark side: Liam Steel’s 2016 Royal College of Music production. But then, that is not what they are trying to do. The story is told directly, without kitschy evasion or indeed kitsch of any variety. It offers an apt sense of wonder, colour—perhaps heat too, at least metaphorically?—increasing from the relatively drab, humdrum house from which the children have started. Clowns offer a hint or two of menace as the creatures of the forest: clowns always do. The witch is clearly a tormented soul as well as tormentor, a point concerning which, like others, one can make what one wishes. Children doubtless will have done: in no sense being condescended to in the recreation of ‘childhood’ many adults, declining to face up to their own anxieties and fears, wish upon their presumed charges.

I should have to go back, I think, to Sir Colin Davis at Covent Garden to recall so finely conducted a performance. Donald Runnicles and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper did Humperdinck proud not only in presentation but in exploration. Here in the orchestra, one might say, we heard the most fruitful and challenging musical drama. It would be difficult, no impossible, and certainly perverse to play down Humperdinck’s Wagnerisms. Even when they verge on outright plagiarism they do not fail to charm—unlike those of many successors. To hear a performance, however, in which the conductor makes so much of the weblike connection of motifs that one fancies one might be hearing the work of The Master himself is a rare treat indeed. So too is to hear quite how much Humperdinck’s score owes—or can be made to owe—to the yearning of Tristan as to the more obvious candidates, above all to Die Meistersinger. What to make of that? There are psychoanalytical possibilities aplenty, for those willing to take them. Does that not after all penetrate to the heart of what fairy tales have to offer? Speaking of seduction, who could resist the polished tone, dark or golden by turn, of this orchestra at something approaching its best?

Jana Kurucová and Alexandra Hutton made for an engaging central pair: well contrasted and yet also complementary, as adept with stage business as vocal line in construction and development of character. Heidi Melton surely falls into the category of ‘luxury casting’ for their mother, Gertrud, and what a welcome luxury this proved to be, Wagnerian antecedents present for those who wished to consider them, yet perfectly scaled—not necessarily scaled down—and imbued with abundant warmth and humanity. Noel Bouley’s Peter sounded a little out of sorts toward the close, but it was nothing too serious. Andrew Dickinson’s Witch intrigued: no mere caricature, though ultimately an enigma. Flurina Stucki as the Sandman and Dew Fairy, together with the children’s choir and movement choir, all contributed to the evening’s enchantment. Next operatic stop: across town for something rather different, Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee.

Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Opera, 13 December 2018

Royal Opera House

Images: Clive Barda /ROH (copyright 2018)
Gertrud (Michaela Schuster), Hänsel (Hanna Hipp), Gretel (Jennifer Davis), Peter (James Rutherford)

Gretel – Jennifer Davis

Hänsel – Hanna Hipp

Gertrud – Michaela Schuster

Peter – Eddie Wade

Sandman – Haegee Lee

Dew Fairy – Christina Gansch

Witch – Gerhard Siegel

Antony McDonald (director, designs)

Lucy Carter (lighting)

Lucy Burge (movement)

Actors, Dancers

ROH Youth Opera Company

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Sebastian Weigle (conductor)

First the good news: the Royal Opera’s new production of Hänsel und Gretel was certainly well sung, if ultimately lacking the sheer memorability of a great performance. Jennifer Davis and Hanna Hipp made for a highly likeable sister and brother. From the front of the stalls, where I was fortunate enough to be seated, their facial movements and other body language were just as telling as their musical performances, diction as excellent as vocal line. Lucy Burge’s skilled movement direction proved a definite boon, here and elsewhere. Michaela Schuster’s Gertrud offered luxury casting, finely assumed, even if it were wasted on a production which gave her little to do; Eddie Wade’s last-minute substitution for an indisposed James Rutherford as her husband likewise did all that might reasonably have been asked of it. If Gerhard Siegel’s Witch suffered most of all from the production’s inadequacies, having a veteran Mime in the role offered plenty of food for independent thought, especially when sung with relish and precision. The smaller solo roles were both well taken and the singing children from the ROH Youth Opera Company did themselves – doubtless their friends and families too – proud.

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House played well too, if again some distance short of memorably. If only these musicians had been conducted by someone with greater charisma than the decidedly Kapellmeister-ish Sebastian Weigle. He made a considerably better job of leading the performance than in Berlinlast year: less incoherent, but ultimately still thin flat, and featureless, especially when compared to memories from just ten years ago of Colin Davis conducting this production’s predecessor here at Covent Garden. There was little to move, little to thrill. Worst of all, whatever the time on the clock, the performance dragged. This well-nigh perfectly proportioned Märchenspiel seemed at times as if it might never end. Hardly the thing for ‘children of all ages’, as the tedious cliché has it.

Sandman (Haegee Lee)

The greatest disappointment, however, was Antony McDonald’s vacuous production itself. Had this been a remnant from several decades ago, kept on rather than replaced, one might have smiled, or at least grimaced, indulgently. That it had been commissioned to replace the thoughtful staging from Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier first conducted by Davis beggared belief – especially when strongly rumoured that the mouthwatering prospect of a staging of Humperdinck’s Königskinder had been shelved in its favour. A late nineteenth-century, kitschy Alpine setting was presented entirely without irony, Hänsel’s resemblance to Jeanette Krankie seeming inadvertent rather than provocative. The story proceeded as it should, through the forest, without interest and more or less without incident. The Sandman merely looked peculiar. For some reason – presumably a bit of money was left over – various characters from the Brothers Grimm wandered and danced around during the pantomime dream sequence. In case you had not noticed, a large book was brought on with the Grimms’ name on it. Then it was on to a weirdly Americanised house of horror, with little sign of gingerbread at all. Subsequent action was messed about with for no discernible reason, to the extent that it made little sense. The Witch, who at one point seemed to have stepped out of a wisely undeveloped sketch for a Carry On film, was pushed into a vat of chocolate (?) whilst the oven went unused. The children’s choir’s appearance puzzled rather than fulfilled.

Kitsch to ineptitude: a Konzept of sorts, but only if it were knowing. The sole glimpse I caught of the semblance of an idea, albeit quite undeveloped, was the wolf following Red Riding Hood in the unsuccessful request for a kiss from Prince Charming prior to Cinderella’s appearance. That was it. Doubtless the third act signified an attempt to do something ‘different’, even vaguely ‘contemporary’ – in practice, about forty years old. Being different for the sake of it, however, does not an idea make. Children, still more than adults, deserved much better, as did the cast. A young audience is no excuse, quite the contrary, for a third-rate staging.

Hänsel, Witch (Gerhard Siegel)

If the evening dragged in the theatre, it did all the more in retrospect, when to test my response – and for the sheer joy of it – I played at home Karajan’s legendary EMI recording. Needless to say, it flew by in no time at all. For audio alone, that fleet, unsentimental, yet nevertheless lovely account remains a clear first choice. On DVD, return to Covent Garden for Colin Davis and company in far more luxuriant mode (musically, at least). The Royal Opera might not, alas, be able to bring back Sir Colin. It should nevertheless seriously consider ditching this pointless, enervating production for its intelligent, far from iconoclastic predecessor, or indeed learning from the superlative production Liam Steel created in 2016 for the Royal College of Music. Then, please, that Königskinder…

Hänsel und Gretel, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 11 December 2017

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Gretel (Elsa Dreisig) and Hänsel (Katrin Wundsam)
Images: Monika Rittershaus

Peter – Arttu Kataja

Gertrud – Marina Prudenskaya

Hänsel – Katrin Wundsam

Gretel – Elsa Dreisig

Witch – Jürgen Sacher

Sandman – Corinna Scheurle

Dew Fairy – Sarah Aristidou

Achim Freyer (director, designs, lighting)

Geertje Boeden (assistant director)

Petra Weikert (assistant designer)

Sebastian Alphons (lighting)

Jakob Klaffs, Hugo Reis (video)

Elena Garcia Fernandez, Larissa Wieczorek (dramaturgy)

Children’s Chorus of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (chorus master: Vincenz Weissenburger)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Sebastian Weigle (conductor)

The first performance of Humperdinck’s fairy-tale opera, Hänsel und Gretel, on the night before Christmas Eve, 1893, in Weimar, was conducted by Richard Strauss. The work’s second staging, in Hamburg, in September of the following year, was conducted by Gustav Mahler. It reached Berlin, this very house, then home to the Royal Court rather than the State Opera, the following month, and has belonged to the world ever since. Alas, that very popularity and a strange, seemingly related, insistence on presenting a tale of child abuse with sugar coating have tended to lead to the opera’s underestimation, or at least to insipid presentation, even non-interpretation. What, after all, is a fairy tale, if it is not an invitation to interpretation, for children, for adults, for all? For those to whom the Brothers Grim(m) were something a little more interesting than Eric and Donald Trump Jr, this would be mind-numbingly obvious; alas, audiences being what they often are…

Hänsel, The Witch (Jürgen Sacher), and Gretel

Achim Freyer does not penetrate so deep as LiamSteel in his Royal College of Music staging; when I saw that, I more or less instantly realised it was the production for which I had been waiting much of my adult life. (Yes, as I never tire of pointing out, much of the best London opera takes place in our conservatoires.) But nor does he try to; his concerns are different. He is certainly not pandering to reactionary ‘tastes’, in the manner of Adrian Noble in his Vienna Disneyfication. Where Freyer excels, as, at his best, he always does, is in the creation of a world, both childlike and perhaps not. I say ‘perhaps’, since who is to say what is ‘childlike’ and what is not, or indeed what its opposite might be. Is that, again, not part of the essence of fairy tales? Clowns are present, of course; there is that undeniable element of Freyer house style, but why not? It does not look, like sometimes his staging have, as merely more of the same, or one size fits all; nor does it feel like it. The sense of theatre is keen, not without framing, for instance when the wondrous flick of the lighting switch opens the metaphorical story book at the opening, yet without ever seeming pleased with itself, or too clever-clever. Children, of whatever age, do not like that; often they are right not to do so. We never see the ‘real’ Hänsel and Gretel, or rather the ‘real’ singers, not really, for their masks cover their faces several times over. But what is ‘real’? And what is ‘real’ here? Perhaps the plot interests Freyer less: a pity, I think, but he has other concerns. And the dream-like sense of proceedings, if only in retrospect, acquires a more darkly, yet also brightly, sense of the political and its possibilities, with a final unveiling of the sign ‘REVOLUTIO’. Unfinished business, or a joke? Dreamers or anti-dreamers, from Novalis to Brecht, may – or may not – have their say. Life with Freyer, life in many fairy tales, is a circus; yet think of what a circus, that theatre of cruelty, of the absurd, of society and anti-society, involves, suggests, incites.

If only the musical side of things had lived up to those possibilities. Sebastian Weigle’s conducting was, alas, throughout Kapellmeister-ish in the negative sense. ‘Light’, as if attempting a demonstration that Mendelssohn were not worth listening to, almost entirely without Wagnerisms, let alone the kinship with Strauss Christian Thielemann in that Vienna performance had imparted, rightly or wrongly to the score, the greater sin of Weigle’s reading was listlessness. I do not think I have ever heard the first act drag so; nor have I heard the music sound less magical. Weigle is certainly no Strauss or Mahler. It would be a hard task indeed to have the Staatskapelle Berlin sound bad in this music, and it did not; but this great orchestra was sadly undersold throughout, achieving a few moments of wonder despite, not on account of, its conductor.

It was not a vintage night for singing either, although Elsa Dreisig sparkled as Gretel. Katrin Wundsam sometimes sounded rather harsh as Hänsel. Marina Prudenskaja and Arttu Kataja sang well enough as their parents, likewise Jürgen Sacher as the Witch, but perhaps needed something more in the way of inspirational musical leadership – I shall never forget Colin Davis in 2008 – to lift their performances to something more memorable. There was hope, though, that in a subsequent revival, not only better conducted, but perhaps more engaged with the possibilities hinted at by Freyer, something more than the sum of the parts might emerge. That hope is, after all, the fuel on which opera houses, especially houses now reborn such as this, should burn.

Hänsel und Gretel, Royal College of Music, 4 and 5 July 2016

Hänsel (Kamilla Dunstan), Peter (Timothy Connor), Gertrud (Elspeth Marrow), Gretel (Gemma Lois Summerfield)
Images: Chris Christodoulou

 

Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music

Peter – Timothy Connor/Nicholas Morton

Gertrud – Elspeth Marrow/Amy Lyddon
Hänsel – Kamilla Dunstan/Katie Coventry
Gretel – Gemma Lois Summerfield/Sofia Larsson
Witch – Richard Pinkstone/Joel Williams
Sandman – Maria Stasiak
Dew Fairy – Louise Fuller

Liam Steel (director)

Myriddin Wannel (designs)
Andy Purves (lighting)

Chorus of Echoes, Angels, and Gingerbread Children

Royal College of Music Opera Orchestra

Michael Rosewell (conductor)

Gertrud (Elspeth Marrow) and
Peter (Timothy Connor)

 

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, albeit with less varied tunes, I shall say again that much of the best opera in London is to be found at our conservatoires. Moreover, they seem to get better and better. I am not sure why, but it had been a little while since I had gone to a Royal College of Music production; this made me realise just what I had been missing. Indeed, I think it was probably not only the best production I had seen there, but perhaps, all things considered – and there are always many things to consider when it comes to opera! – the best production of Hänsel und Gretel I had seen anywhere.

 

Liam Steel’s staging is the one I and many others have been waiting for, light-years away from the evasive, glossy, yet reassuringly völkisch  - reassuring to the völkisch, that is – School of Cameron Mackintosh production Adrian Noble recently inflicted upon the Vienna State Opera. I can hear a self-styled operatic ‘conservative’ seething already: ‘Oh for goodness sake. Leave it alone; it’s just a fairy tale.’ Indeed, the bizarre Bernd Weikl has recently called for criminal prosecutions (!) of directors whose work he does not like, has done just that, pointing to the New York Met (yes, you read that correctly) as a model of sensible staging and funding. Just a fairy tale? Fairy tales, as we all, save for a bewildering number of opera directors and managers, know, are full of all manner of violence. So, of course, are adult constructions of something called ‘childhood’. Children do not think about ‘childhood’, claim to wish to ‘protect’ it, whilst at every twist and turn undermining it; children, simply, or rather not so simply, live their lives under the increasingly oppressive shadow of this construction. They – and we – learn a great deal from ‘fairy tales’. We certainly do on this occasion, in which abuse takes centre stage. That abuse is not so much the abuse of childhood’s construction, although we are likely also to be led to reflect upon that, as that violence against children which, more often than not, takes place within the ‘home’, within the hallowed sanctuary-cum-torture-chamber of the family.

 

Gretel (Gemma Lois Summerfield)

I nearly added ‘bourgeois’ to ‘family’, then decided against it, since one of the many disturbing aspects of Steel’s production is the poverty – very much part of the ‘fairy tale’ and of the ‘original’ artwork from Engelbert Humperdinck and his sister, Adelheid Wette – in which the family lives. We begin with a cartoon, a projection of what two children, plonked in front of the television whilst their parents are out (perhaps working), are watching: David Ochs’s Who’s Hungry? Ending with the old test card – now that is something to divide us according to age – we can then focus properly, in every sense, upon the revealed stage. When we first properly see Peter and Gertrud, they are dirt – literally, so – poor, their unwashed, unkempt existence mirrored in, intensified by the miserable kitchen in which they play. Myriddin Wannell’s designs, here and elsewhere, are as crucial to the development of the Konzept as Steel’s detailed, yet never too-detailed Personenregie. The awkwardness of the children’s dancing is as important, in its way, as the stunted dance of Elektra in Patrice Chéreau’s shattering staging (ironically, recently taken to the Met). They are certainly damaged, then, by the abject poverty that reduces them to the all-too-convenient category of what many, too many, in this country would dismiss as ‘chavs’, and, as soon becomes clear, by something else, as yet intangible. And yet, at the same time, they are not quite broken; they can play, even if, especially in Hänsel’s case, it takes a bit of sisterly encouragement for him to break his inhibitions. (And what, we might well ask, lies behind or beneath those inhibitions? It seems a little more than mere insistence that he is a boy, not a girl, although that is clearly the starting point, in work and production.)

Peter (Nicholas Morton)

The milk having been spilt, the children expelled, we witness a tattooed, swaggering, Peter’s return to Gertrud, her hairstyle (‘Croydon’, is I believe, the snobbish description), condition (heavily pregnant, ‘once again’, one assumes, de haut en bas), and clothes almost the very image of what our construction of a ‘neglectful parent’ would be. Theirs is an evidently sexual relationship. (Freud would, of course, tell us of the anxiety resultant from children imagining their parents having sex, and the consequences of such anxiety.) Indeed, Peter cannot keep his hands off Gertrud; and once she realises he has, literally, brought home the bacon, and much else, she is duly, seemingly genuinely, appreciative. It is Peter, though, who asks about the children and who worries when he hears from Gertrud where they have gone. At the time, we think – or at least I thought – that that is just a matter of being interrupted in the act, and, once she has attended to her cane (which we may or may not notice at the time), her handbag and its contents, she happily accompanies her husband to look for the children.

 



Sandman (Maria Stasiak)

Lest that all sound too un-Grimm-like (but what do the ‘protectors’ of the Brothers actually know of their collections?), the woods are wonderfully so. Are they in some sense a projection, a fantasy? Perhaps. Certainly some of the darkness appears to have resulted from the cartoon projections. (The second act is introduced by Jan Švankmajer’s Jabberwocky, the third by Katy Towell’s Never Wake Up; their relevance will be clear from the titles alone, but their portrayals of childhood within a general framework entertainment, not least portrayals of dolls and their dismemberment, tell us more still.) That this is a nightmare is clear, certain objects, not least the stove, the fridge, and the kitchen door, remaining constant, or near-constant, throughout all three acts. That is not, of course, to say that the nightmare is not also ‘reality’. Gnarled trees, made up sometimes, or so it seems, of strange woodland figures, enhance the sense not only of danger but of necessary enchantment (whether good, evil, or something else). The Sandman’s emergence fascinates: is he ‘just’ a vagrant with carrier bags or something more primæval, as his pleasing, traditional countenance and, indeed, Andy Purves’s lighting might suggest? We are not sure, and indeed our dreams and nightmares play a role in our interpretation.

 

Hansel (Katie Coventry), Peter (Nicholas Morton), Gertrud (Amy Lyddon), and Gretel (Sofia Larsson)

The Evening Prayer underlines how close, through necessity, Hänsel and Gretel have become: now he does not mock her prayer, as he had at the beginning of the first act; they protect each other. And the Dream Pantomime is, quite simply heartbreaking. Here, we see the ‘perfect’ family, the ‘perfect’ Christmas they – we – desperately want. Not only are the children the objects of that unconditional parental love society has children, rightly or wrongly, believe is the norm; not only do they receive gifts which are worth more, emotionally as much as financially, than they have likely ever received in their lives; not only are their parents bedecked in good, respectable middle-class clothes (slightly different, according to which cast) which they could never afford and would most likely shun even if they could; not only is a veritable feast of food and wine prepared; there is hope, and there is fulfilment of that hope. It is, in short, Christmas – or rather, our construction of ‘Christmas’, which necessarily involves, co-opts, arguably abuses children. The appearance of the Dew Fairy, at the beginning of the next act, offers deconstructive humour; where that ideal might have granted us forlorn hope, here we have someone much the worse for wear, spilling her wine from the bottle – not so much the morning after the night before as her revels not yet having ended.
 

Witch (Joel Williams) and Hänsel (Katie Coventry)

An abiding childhood fear at my school, and I am sure not just at my school, was of the loner who would attract one back to his – it always seemed to be ‘his’ – car with a bag of sweets. We heard about that all the time, although no one ever seemed to have heard of it actually happening. The Witch attracts the children then, with conventional methods – just as (s)he always has. We see the gingerbread house as we should. And we see a ‘respectable’ if somewhat grotesque old lady (en travestie), her house boasting comfortable furnishings as well as edible treats, and, crucially, photographic portraits of young children, just as we would when they were reported missing – and indeed, just as we have at the beginning of the show. The children are wary, perhaps warier than usual in productions of this work; do they know something already, perhaps have some experience of what might happen? At any rate, the conservative’s ‘harmless’ fairy tale progresses as it should, the Witch capturing Hänsel in her cage, force-feeding him like a dog, ready for his baking, until the children turn the tables. There is a break in which we are blinded – well, not quite, but we certainly cannot see what happens behind. A few words of dialogue – the first act also began with some – lead us into the children’s tentative healing of the rescued other children. There is joy, but there is clearly also trauma; how could there not be? And when, full of the (apparently, at least) purest joy, their father finally discovers them, ‘true’ familial love seems to be the order of the day. Given the horrors of what have happened, this reunion is rendered all the more moving – perhaps more so on the first evening than the second, which seemed a little less dark (although that might have been more a matter of my own mood, or that of a section of the audience, which seemed determined, bizarrely, to laugh a little too often on the second evening).

 

Witch (Richard Pinkstone)

And yet… Steel has a chilling twist to the tale. Gretel scowls at the children; they look at her, terrified. There is no heartfelt reunion, indeed no physical contact, there. The inebriated, genuinely beloved Peter, oblivious to all but the general rejoicing, fails to notice as she collects her (the Witch’s) wig and stick. There may be no use crying over spilt milk; how, however, could the children – and we – fail to do so in this case? And ‘case’ perhaps should have more than one meaning, for who is the narrator, reliable or unreliable, here? What actually was or is the ‘abuse’? Is it ‘real’ or the fantasy of Hänsel and Gretel, as a result of neglect and ill-temper on their mother’s part? When Gertrud collects the stick, is there just a chance she might actually be the long-suffering mother (perhaps another of our longstanding constructions: the ‘wicked stepmother’) having yet again to clean up the mess? But surely that fear on the children’s faces was all-too-real, was it not? Difficult questions indeed.



Dew Fairy (Louise Fuller)

None of that would have amounted to anything very much without such excellent performances. So enthused was I by the first performance I attended that I arranged to return the following evening to hear the second cast. Our Hänsels and Gretels were not dissimilar. Both Kamilla Dunstan and Katie Coventry were excellent at portraying their character’s boyishness, without loss to genuinely lovely mezzo-soprano tone quality. (It goes with the mezzo territory, I suppose.) As Gretel, Gemma Lois Summerfield and Sofia Larsson both proved warmly sympathetic, both in vocal and stage terms. Elspeth Marrow and Amy Lyddon both carried off the difficult task of portraying, indeed exploring a more complex Gertrud than we genuinely encounter. Not only did they disturb, though; they both sang beautifully. (I am once again proud to say how lovely it is to encounter former Royal Holloway students, in this case Marrow and Coventry, making their way in musical careers.) There was greater contrast between the two Peters. Timothy Connor was fuller of swagger, disarmingly sexy; Gertrud’s mother would doubtless have thought him a bad lot, yet been charmed in person. Nicholas Morton offered a sadder, more forlorn figure, not least in vocal tone, very much emerging from the German Romantic past. Both worked splendidly; indeed, they complemented each other strikingly, offering different perspectives, even within the same production. Our two witches, Richard Pinkstone and Joel Williams, both trod with great skill the fine line between comedy and tragedy, with stagecraft second to none, stagecraft that yet did not eclipse their estimable vocal attributes. Maria Stasiak and Louise Fuller offered lovely singing and plenty of stage presence as the Sandman and Dew Fairy respectively. The RCM Chorus of Echoes and the younger Angels and Gingerbread Children rounded off a thoroughly excellent cast; their contribution may be mentioned last here, but it should certainly not be considered as least.

 



Gretel (Sofia Larsson) and
Hänsel (Katie Coventry)

Michael Rosewell’s conducting and the playing of the RCM Opera Orchestra were similarly first-class. It might seem absurd to compare them to Thielemann at the Vienna State Opera last November, in the Noble production I mentioned above, and I do not really intend to do so, but hand on heart, I can say that they would have nothing to fear from such a comparison. The theatre is smaller, of course, but what we heard was plenty to fill the RCM’s Britten Theatre, and not just to fill it, to sound as gloriously Romantic, and if anything, more variegated, both in terms of texture and articulation, than that Viennese performance. A relatively small string section (7.6.4.4.2) certainly did not sound small – perhaps occasionally on the thin side on the second night, but only occasionally (and that may have been more a matter of sitting in a different part of the theatre). There were some truly ravishing solos to be enjoyed. The wind sounded vernal, autumnal, and all manner of seasonal shades in between. Rosewell’s handling of Humperdinck’s post-Wagnerian melos was impeccable, indeed often enthralling. Transitions were handled without the slightest hint of awkwardness. Humperdinck’s Wagnerisms and, I think, his anticipations of Strauss (Rosenkavalier, for instance, in both the second and third acts) too shone through in all their irresistible loveliness. Not for nothing did Strauss conduct the premiere. Equally apparent and immediate, however, was the dramatic menace necessary to convey the story and its undertones, often founded in a secure yet wandering bass line; this was no tale of opposition between pit and stage. All concerned had, quite clearly, learned from the collaboration – and, I suspect, enjoyed it very much too. I certainly did, and, as you will have gathered, it really had me think too. These, then, were performances for which I should gladly have travelled some way to see and to hear. Outstanding!

 

 

Biss/Philharmonia/Valčuha - Strauss, Mozart, and Humperdinck, 4 December 2014

Royal Festival Hall

 

 

Strauss – Don Juan, op.20

Mozart – Piano Concerto no.9 in E-flat major, KV 271

Humperdinck – Hänsel und Gretel: Suite

Strauss – Der Rosenkavalier: Suite

 

 

Jonathan Biss (piano)

Olena Tokar (soprano)

Kai Rüütel (mezzo-soprano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Juraj Valčuha (conductor)

 

As Strauss year draws towards a close, the Philharmonia under Juraj Valčuha offered a rather lovely pendant, two of his own works – the Rosenkavalier Suite sort of counts – paired with excerpts from an opera whose premiere he conducted, and an early masterpiece from the composer he, rightly, adored above all others. I still have two major performances to go: both Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra in Dresden (on which I shall report back soon), but this certainly kept me going in the meantime.

 

So extraordinarily accomplished and characteristic is Don Juan that we can forget how early a work it is; indeed, Strauss was only three years older than Mozart was when he composed his Ninth Piano Concerto. There was certainly nothing jejune to this account from Valčuha’s and the Phiharmonia. The opening was precise, not pedantic, its vitality and indeed vitalism aided by the greatest orchestral clarity and cultivation. Immediately afterwards, Valčuha displayed a commendable, meaningful flexibility that marked out this performance as integrative, in a well-nigh Wagnerian, musico-dramatic sense, rather than streamlined and shoehorned. Perhaps there was the occasional transition which might have been smoother still, but that is really to nit-pick, and perhaps to attempt a trade off with the keen sense of drama achieved. There was a beautifully judged early sunset, always a pertinent Straussian test; this was noble, without a hint of sentimentality, just as the Lenau-Strauss hero should be. A deep string sound worked wonders, passages with violas, cellos, and basses together reminding us that there are gains as well as losses to the now-unfashionable arrangement that has them seated together. Horns at that moment, followed by violins in all their Straussian glory, told us what mattered about this hero. His materialist death, in all its necessary instrumental detail, could not eclipse that memory.

 

As Jonathan Biss was about to come on stage for the concerto, Mitsuko Uchida crept into the Stalls: quite an endorsement, by any standards. The visible keenness of her listening and the generosity of her response would almost have been worth the price of admission in themselves. I was perhaps a little less enamoured with Biss’s performance, although there was certainly much to admire. Valčuha proved himself an expert ‘accompanist’, the opening to the first movement at least as alert as that to Don Juan. The Philharmonia offered wonderfully cultivated playing once again, deftly shaped by the conductor. Biss responded with clear, at times even pearly tone, my principal reservation about this movement simply being the tempo: was it perhaps a little too hurried? One might argue that this is a young man’s music, but I am not sure what that proves; in any case, does not all of Mozart’s music fall into that category? There was no quarrel to be had, though, with the shaping of phrases. Form was very clearly defined; particularly noticeable was the sense of kinship with older concerto forms in the orchestral tutti. Although the second movement was again on the swift side, it did not feel hurried. Operatic sadness and import were well judged. Likewise, there was a fine sense of musico-dramatic impetus, bringing us perhaps closer to Strauss than one might have thought, and certainly reminding us of another of his enthusiasms, the operas of Gluck. Above all, harmonic rhythm was understood and communicated. The finale lifted the spirits with a good nature to rival Haydn’s. Although its minuet was certainly graceful, Biss was perhaps a little cool. There was no doubting, however, his technique; repeated notes, for instance, were an object lesson in performance.

 

It would take a sterner, steelier soul than mine to resist the call of those opening horns in the Overture to Hänsel und Gretel, especially when so tenderly played – the German weich seems so apt here – and so warmly responded to. I was drawn in, just as if in the opera house. Valčuha thereafter served up a lovable pot pourri, perhaps not quite so symphonic as when I heard Sir Colin Davis conduct the opera at Covent Garden, but that is a comparison unduly odious. Olena Tokar, whom I had previously admired in Das Liebesverbot in Leipzig, and Kai Rüütel, whom I heard as Echo in this opera at its Royal Opera revival, both impressed in the opening duet and beyond. Voices and characters were sharply differentiated, Valčuha showing himself to be an operatic ‘natural’. (He is, I later learned, due this season to conduct Parsifal in Budapest, Turandot in Naples, and Jenůfa in Bologna.) And yes, your stern Beckmesser melted in the dance song. The Sandman’s Song followed, Tokar benefiting from breathtaking orchestral stillness at its opening; this certainly had that necessary sense of magic. The sincerity of Tokar’s delivery, when she told of angels bringing down sweet dreams from heaven, brought at least one tear to my eye. Following the Prayer, the siblings left the stage for the concluding Dream Pantomime, whose shaping was undoubtedly symphonic, Wagnerian brass and all. If Valčuha lingered just a little long towards the end, it was a fault readily forgiven.

 

For all one might suspect there to be affinity, what struck with the opening of the Rosenkavalier Suite – yes, I am afraid, the wretched 1945 assemblage, to whom no one ever seems to have owned up – was difference. A glistening edge returned to the orchestra. Romanticism was dead; modernist phantasmagoria – and what phantasmagoria! – was enthroned in all its assiduously pictorial glory. There was no doubt what was being depicted in the Prelude’s thrusting and afterglow. Even without voices, the Presentation of the Rose was well handled. Valčuha could not paper over some of the later cracks, but I am not sure that anyone has ever been able to do so. At least we got to enjoy the luck of the Lerchenaus with a decent swagger and lilt.

 

I hope that we shall hear more from this conductor, both in the concert hall and in the opera house. Both ENO and the Royal Opera would be well advised to offer him engagements.