Losing the plot | 9 February 2017

Fully to enjoy Opera North’s new production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel you need to take a trinocular perspective on it, but you can enjoy it a lot anyway. You could be mystified, if you don’t know the story, by the setting and action, as indeed I was some of the time despite having recently watched a straightforward account of it from Vienna on DVD, and having seen countless productions of it. So I would advise at least reading the plot. As so often with contemporary operatic productions, the synopsis in the programme book bears only a passing resemblance to what you see on the stage. If you are conscientious enough to read the articles in the programme book, you will find a stress, perfectly justified, on the violence of the fairy tale as narrated by the Grimms, though Humperdinck’s librettist, his sister Adelheid Wette, made it a lot more palatable for children, neglecting the fact that children welcome as much bloodthirstiness as possible.