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.  

Turandot, Royal Opera, 10 March 2023

Royal Opera House

Turandot – Anna Pirozzi
Emperor Altoum – Alexander Kravets
Calaf – Yonghoo Lee
Liù – Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha
Timur – Vitalij Kowalkow
Ping – Hansung Yoo
Pang – Aled Hall
Pong – Michael Gibson
Mandarin – Blaise Malaba
Two Girls – Marianne Cotterill, Tamsin Coombs

Andrei Serban (director)
Jack Furness (revival director)
Sally Jacobs (designs)
Kate Flatt (choreography)
Tatiana Novaes Coelho (choreology)
E. Mitchell Dana (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Images: Marc Brenner

Andrei Serban’s production of Turandot has certainly offered the Royal Opera its money’s worth. First seen – somewhat oddly, not at Covent Garden, but on tour to Los Angeles – in 1984, it has had no fewer than fifteen revivals on home territory, as well as touring internationally and being adapted for performances at Wembley Arena (1991 and 1992). No wonder, as Serban’s programme biography states, that ‘he is both surprised and delighted that his production … is still revived.’ This, however, is apparently to be its final outing. Assuming that to be the case, it is receiving a good send off: not before time, yet with strong performances and revival direction from Jack Furness considerably more convincing than what I saw in earlier reincarnations (2013 and 2014). 

What we see seems understandably eager to veer towards Carlo Gozzi’s fairytale. Ping, Pang, and Pong (I know…) lose the worst of their racialised appearance, clearly taking their leave instead from commedia dell’arte. Lively performances from Hansung Yoo, Aled Hall, and Michael Gibson certainly helped in that respect, perhaps even going so far as to suggest that these, alongside Puccini, might be the real orchestrators of the action, playful as well as sadistic, intriguingly beyond morality in an almost Nieztschean sense. Where that leaves the story of Turandot, Calaf, and of course Liù remains, shall we say, problematical. The ‘arias’ embedded in the score stood out awkwardly, as if remnants – and in a way they are – of bygone technique, which the composer at the height of his musical powers was unable to banish entirely, on account of theatrical and audience expectations. 

The closer the story moves to realism, the more repellent its final sadism becomes: magnificent in a way, yet also strangely unsatisfactory. The more fantastical the framework and action, the greater the artifice, the better. This seems to be well understood and indeed communicated, not least through a parade of dances that might readily have seemed theatrical for the sake of theatre. In a way they still do, yet in this context, that offers a possibility if not quite for redemption, than for something less (im)morally outrageous. The framing of the set as a theatre of sorts, or at least a public arena suggestive of one – are not the two often coterminous and coexistent? – contributes with unusual success to that desirable distancing of standpoint. Masks serve with similar, indeed still more absolute, necessity.

 

In the title role, Anna Pirozzi offered a well sung, unusually human performance, warmer than many, though also posing the question as to whether that is what we should want here. Why not, really? In posing that question it is surely performing a dramatic service of its own, difficult conflict being part of the point. Yonghoon Lee’s heroic stab at Calaf should also be commended. Only on rare occasions, when something more inwardly vulnerable was required, did it sound lacking, but that is always a difficult near-circle to square. He can ride an orchestral wave, and did. He also seemed very much at one with Furness’s reimagining of the production. Even reimagined, the production arguably does Liù no favours, but that is much to ask of any staging. Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha’s heartfelt, sincere performance was very much in the mainstream of expectations here. Timur’s strange appearance – an old man, to be sure, though it is stranger than that – likewise does the role no favours, yet when he sang, Vitalij Kowalkow was able vocally to rise far above visual limitations. 

In the pit, Antonio Pappano offered what for me turned out to be one of his best performances at Covent Garden. I have given up trying to reconcile myself to his Wagner; we clearly hear and understand that and much other music in such different ways that I am unlikely to ‘get’ it any time soon. Here, however, a Puccini darkly haunted by, even founded upon, marriage of darkly Wagnerian chromaticism to a surprisingly Wagnerian way with motivic construction – to my ears, more so than in Pappano’s Wagner – offered just the sort of musico-theatrical experience that was called for. Flexible yet goal-directed, enabling of singers yet also revelling in Puccini’s ‘symphonism’, it told us what we knew yet perhaps still wished we did not. This was a murky, malevolent tale that could not quite be wished away with a welcome does of theatrical fantasy. The oft-remarked affinities with more contemporary (to Puccini) music, not least Stravinsky and Schoenberg, were perhaps less immediately present, but viciousness both of score and broader theatrical purpose were certainly very much with us. With orchestra and chorus on excellent form, Pappano brought something both old and new to the score, greatly to his – and its – credit.

 

Farewell then, we think, to Serban. Even when revived with such intelligence as seen here, this is not a production directly to address the very difficult, probably insoluble, questions this extraordinary, flawed opera presents. Yet, given space such as was granted here – and was not, to the best of my memory, so apparent when I first saw the production – it can nonetheless permit them to play out. Taking a view seems more of a moral imperative here, on account of the sadism as much as the racism; there are many ways to do that, whether by transforming the work into something more directly political (or something else?) or by confronting its issues head on. We shall see what Serban’s successor does. This however, offers an often intriguing and absorbing last hurrah, as well, I suspect, as a hint to why new steps may prove necessary.