The other characters carried their weight overall, filling in the array of supports. Together, the pair illustrated just what has made the opera a favorite since its composition and first performance in 1896.
She bounced and leaped singing with merriment and gusto, playing a perfect companion to the brother she attended. In her we found the conventional boy child who sleeps too late and doesn’t comb his hair but rises to be the protective brother who shouts at the stars. Child and competent adult she stayed throughout, a task not as easy as it seems. Her voice soared over the orchestra and beyond, her tone remaining rich and caressing all the while she moved with ease, carrying off the necessary stage business of a small boy with aplomb. Cooke sang Hansel with beauty, finesse and ease. Each sang in festive holiday offering, and together they were more than double. Hansel and Gretel themselves, sung by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and soprano Heidi Stober, more than carried the show. Even the wicked witch gets his comeuppance before shivers of horror run down the spine.
The tone remained not simply free of danger, but pale, however deft the performance and the direction. At this point, it is fair to wonder whether too much Disney has too effectively replaced the “once upon a time” we went to for our imagination-fix. Antony McDonald set the whole in a Heidi-esque landscape and populated the forest with familiar fairy tale icons who domesticate any tone of real danger. Now it comes to us scaffolded by user-friendly elements, most of its darker currents absent. Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel” opened at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House to round out the fall season repertoire.Ĭomposed in the 1890s, Humperdinck based the opera on Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale, hinting at some of the darker ideas resplendent in the original tale. But alas, none of that seems to have permeated the modern readings of this work, cheery as its music might often be.
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