Hansel and Gretel, Royal Opera, Royal Opera House, review: an oddly lame and tame production of Humperdinck’s masterpiece
Perhaps I should report this to the Trade Descriptions watchdog: Covent Garden is brazenly advertising Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel, and what we hear is no such thing. What they are in fact presenting is H?nsel und Gretel, every word sung in German. This sits oddly against the blurb’s assertion that this is a show "for all the family to enjoy ... suitable for children aged 6", and there is no obvious reason for the decision: although opera in English often sounds prim and fusty, David Pountney long ago proved that this particular libretto can be effectively translated.
But the language barrier is only one of the problems with this oddly lame and tame production, designed and directed by Antony McDonald and replacing Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s admittedly unsatisfactory interpretation from 2008.
McDonald begins by showing us an innocuous, picture-postcard front-cloth of an Alpine landscape, complete with chalet and pine forests. However, the Society for the Protection of Operatic Preludes (of which I am a founder member) will soon be incensed by the animation of Humperdinck’s magnificent overture with a dumb show showing Hansel and Gretel’s family dining merrily on noodles before running out of food – a narrative with no organic relation whatsoever to the music’s tenor. Why can’t directors leave orchestral episodes alone and let the composer and the audience’s imagination do the work?
Much more potent stagings of the opera than this one by Pountney (at ENO), Richard Jones (at WNO) and Laurent Pelly (at Glyndebourne) have gone on to use the Grimms’ story as a vehicle to explore the issue of our treatment of children, presenting Hansel; and Gretel as feral victims of abusive and drunken parents. Rather less strikingly, McDonald chooses instead to show them as exemplary of Theresa May’s class of those "just about managing", hard-working decents in need of a helping hand. Hansel and Gretel themselves are not wild runaways, but well-fed and neatly groomed creatures out of the pages of Enid Blyton. Not very interesting!
The majesty and mystery of the forest in Act 2 is similarly downplayed, with the palpitating grandeur of the dream music travestied by a pantomime in which fairy-tale characters such as Cinderella and Rapunzel prance around vacuously and irrelevantly. Just as disappointing is the Gingerbread House, which looks like the Bates residence in Psycho, but is inhabited by a witch who passes for a Tyrolean Hausfrau until she strips off and dons the bloody white coat of a butcher killer. Not very original!
The denouement is bungled through poor stagecraft: I couldn’t believe the clumsiness with which the trapped blind children are introduced. It’s surprising that a designer as inventive as McDonald hasn’t been inspired to create something that used the resources of the Royal Opera House to more effect.
Sebastian Weigle’s efficient but routine conducting was another disappointment: the music never swelled with religious awe nor sparkled with childish joy. I wonder why the Royal Opera’s omnivorous Music Director Antonio Pappano wasn’t in the pit – it’s a score that he must be itching to get his hands on.
Hanna Hipp and Jennifer Davis passed muster in the title roles, though Davis seems to be reining herself in after her triumph in Lohengrin last summer. As the witch, Gerhard Siegel could have made twice the impact he did had he been more subtly directed. Wagnerian heavyweight Michaela Schuster played Mother, and Eddie Wade, a last-minute substitute for James Rutherford, was Father – both more than adequate. Christina Gansch sang prettily as the Dew Fairy. The net result will neither offend nor delight – what a missed opportunity.
In rep until Dec 29. Tickets: 020 7304 4000; roh.org.uk