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Production: Richard Jones, Set and Costume designer: John Macfarlane, Lighting designed by: Jennifer Tipton, Choreographer: Linda Dobell & Translation: David Pountney
Christine Schäfer, Alice Coote and Vladimir Jurowski triumph in Humperdinck’s first and most successful opera – filmed live at the Metropolitan Opera in Hi-Definition.
This irresistibly delicious new English-language production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel is the first Metropolitan Opera : Live in High-Definition series release following EMI Classic’s recent collaboration with the Met.
The Brothers Grimm fairy tale, a timeless children’s favourite, features a sophisticated score, and this intriguing new staging will appeal to audiences of all ages.
Alice Coote and Christine Schäfer are charming as Hansel and Gretel. The role of the Witch, written for a mezzo-soprano, is sometimes sung by a tenor – as is the case in this production - with Philip Langridge in the role.
Vladimir Jurowski, one of the world’s most sought-after conductors, leads Germany’s dearest opera, with a sensitive account of Humperdinck’s enchanting score.
Hansel and Gretel is considered by many as the salvation of German opera, bringing relief from the murky Wagnerian depths of Teutonic myth and initiating a return to the shimmering world of the fairy tale.
In 1923, Hansel and Gretel became the first complete opera to be broadcast on radio from Covent Garden ; Eight years later it was the first to be broadcast from the New York Met. It is significant therefore that this is one of the eight operas chosen to be in this season’s Met HD transmissions.
Beautifully staged by Richard Jones and moodily designed by John Macfarlane, this dark and eccentric production ‘is tough and dark, sparse and savage, an exploration of deprivation, cruelty and gluttony in a contemporary always-always-land’. (Financial Times)
December 2008
***
“…Vladimir Jurowski conducts superbly, and the cast, singing in accessible English, is first-rate, especially Alice Coote and Christine Schäfer and Alan Held's towering Wotanesque Father. The staging… is WNO's familiar Richard Jones effort, with Francis Bacon-style drop curtains of shrieking maws and blood-slathered plates, the Witch visibly roasting in her Auschwitz-style kitchen.”
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