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.
Anyway, we are told about the traditional cruelty of stepmothers, even extending to cannibalism, and other pervasive ghastlinesses of family life as found in myths, legends and tales, not to mention real life. Finally, when the curtain rises, we see the messy kitchen of a house on a contemporary estate — this one surely affordable. There are lots of cardboard boxes around, a table and a big fridge, which of course turns out to be empty. Hansel and Gretel are amusing themselves with a video camera, pointlessly directed at utensils and at themselves. I must say that the performers of the Hansel and Gretel roles are as plausible as any I have seen, indeed Katie Bray as Hansel is ideal in all respects, having clearly studied how young boys move and what expressions they adopt. She has a lovely voice, too, and the opening scene for the two is ravishing musically.
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