University of Hartford "H" Magazine - Winter 2019

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Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel

12/17/2017 1:00 pm
12/17/2017 4:30 pm

 

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

“Hansel and Gretel” (1893), after the Brothers’ Grimm fairy tale, is the obvious choice for the programming of a children’s opera at Christmastime. After all, it’s said Christmas is a holiday especially for the little ones.

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) is known to the world at large through this one work. Nothing else he wrote matched it in international theatrical success. He composed six full-length operas in the course of his career. Another one of his children’s operas is Königskinder (“The King’s Children,” 1910), which I presented on Sunday, December 21, 1986. Then on Sunday, December 11, 2011 came his operatic take on the fairy tale about Sleeping Beauty, Dornröschen (1902).

I have broadcast Hänsel und Gretel twice before, first on Sunday, December 21, 1997, making use of a 1974 Angel/EMI LP release with Andre Cluytens conducting the Vienna Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Better yet, was the 1990 Angel/EMI release I broadcast on December 16, 2007, with Jeffrey Tate leading the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio, as recorded in radio broadcast from Munich in 1989. Musical Heritage Society picked it up for US distribution in 1997. Our Hänsel is diva Anne-Sofie von Otter. Gretel is the equally illustrious soprano Barbara Bonney. They are joined by the boy trebles of the Tölzer Knabenchor as the gingerbread children. I hope you take a childlike joy in hearing Humperdinck’s masterpiece again today on those two MHS silver discs.