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| 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.
