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© Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library
Engelbert Humperdinck (1854 –1921)
Hansel and Gretel
Märchenspiel (fairy-tale) in three acts
Libretto by Adelheid Wette after a fairy-tale
by the Brothers Grimm,
English translation by David Pountney
Hansel
Gretel, his sister
Gertrude, their Mother
Peter, their Father
The Witch
The Dew Fairy
The Sandman
The Cuckoo
New London Children’s Choir
Philharmonia Orchestra
Jennifer Larmore mezzo-soprano
Rebecca Evans soprano
Rosalind Plowright mezzo-soprano
Robert Hayward baritone
Jane Henschel mezzo-soprano
Sarah Tynan soprano
Diana Montague mezzo-soprano
Sarah Coppen
Ronald Corp chorus master
Gareth Hancock assistant conductor
Sir Charles Mackerras
Engelbert Humperdinck with Hansel and Gretel
Caricature by Oscar Garvens
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COMPACT DISC ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Time
Overture
7:39 [p. 76]
Act I
‘Goosey goosey gander, the mouse in the straw’
‘Down with the dumps, out with the grumps’
‘Little brother dance with me’
Gretel, Hansel
‘Hansel!’
Mother, Gretel, Hansel
‘My jug all in bits’
Mother
‘Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, light the fire’
‘But wait, say where are the children?’
‘But there’s one, a crone, who lives alone’
Father, Mother
Prelude to Act II: The Witches’ Ride
Act II
‘A dwarf stood in the forest’
Gretel, Hansel
‘Cuckoo, cuckoo’
Cuckoo, Hansel, Gretel
13
14
2:57 [p. 76]
2:40 [p. 77]
3:39 [p. 78]
15
16
‘Gretel, I think we’ve lost the way’
Hansel, Gretel, voices
‘I am the little sandman’
Sandman, Hansel, Gretel
‘Where each child lays down its head’
Gretel, Hansel
Pantomime
2:39 [p. 88]
3:24 [p. 89]
5:01 [p. 89]
TT 58:49
COMPACT DISC TWO
1:40 [p. 80]
6:27 [p. 81]
3:01 [p. 83]
2:35 [p. 84]
1
2
3
4
5
2:53 [p. 85]
6
3:16 [p. 86]
Page
4:18 [p. 87]
2:15 [p. 79]
4:17 [p. 85]
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 4-5
Time
Page
Act III
[Introduction]
‘When dew drops on the daisy’
Dew Fairy, Gretel
‘I slept here? On a pine-tree bed!’
‘Keep still! No sound!’
Gretel, Hansel
‘Greedy little mousey, who’s nibbling at my housey?’
Witch, Hansel, Gretel
‘Hansel, don’t be so greedy’
Gretel, Hansel, Witch
2:43 [p. 90]
1:40 [p. 90]
5:22 [p. 90]
4:11 [p. 91]
2:00 [p. 92]
5:11 [p. 93]
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7
8
9
10
11
12
13
‘Stop! Hocus pocus, witch’s ground’
Witch
‘Now Gretel, you’re the sensible one’
Witch, Gretel, Hansel
‘So hopp hopp hopp, galopp lopp lopp’
Witch
‘Now wake up, it’s time to eat’
Witch, Gretel, Hansel
‘Hoorah! Now that the witch is dead’
Gretel, Hansel
‘The dead arise, but cannot see’
Gingerbread Children, Gretel, Hansel, Father
‘Father! Mother!’
Gretel, Hansel, Mother, Father, Gingerbread Children
© Beth Bergman 2007
Time
Page
1:17 [p. 95]
5:23 [p. 95]
1:32 [p. 97]
3:51 [p. 97]
2:40 [p. 99]
4:05 [p. 99]
2:16 [p. 101]
TT 42:19
Jennifer Larmore as Hansel in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Hansel and Gretel
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On session: Jennifer Larmore and Rebecca Evans
On session: Sir Charles Mackerras
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Humperdinck’s musical version of Grimm’s scary fairy-tale has
caught the imagination of generations – children and adults
alike. So we were delighted to assemble a wizard cast under the
baton of Sir Charles Mackerras to conjure up (in English!) all
the magic and menace of this fabulous score. Spellbinding!
Sir Peter Moores, CBE, DL
June 2007
Sir Peter Moores with a portrait of Admiral Lord Nelson
by Lemuel Francis Abbott, acquired for Compton Verney
© Lyndon Parker
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Hansel, Gretel and Humperdinck
It’s sometimes asked whether Hansel and Gretel
is really an opera for children or an opera for
adults. The answer, of course, is that it’s for
both. Children will enjoy its straightforward
songs and singing games, its rampaging
comic–grotesque witch with her monstrous
eating habits, and its supernatural apparitions,
culminating in the Dream Pantomime sequence
which, in traditional productions, features
fourteen angels who descend a staircase
to watch over the children asleep in the
nocturnal forest. But then the child in us
all will also enjoy these things. In addition,
adults will probably relish Humperdinck’s
rich orchestration and subtle harmony, his
consistently strong melodic invention and his
masterly counterpoint, and his amazing variety
of mood and texture, veering from nearWagnerian complexity to a Johann Strauss-like
exuberance and danciness. But then children –
even if they’ve never heard of Wagner or
counterpoint – will at least unconsciously
register these pleasurably, too. It’s an opera for
everybody.
A harder question to answer is whether this
particular fairy-tale, or fairy-tales in general,
are suitable for children – or even for adults.
Humperdinck’s opera has a good deal of
comedy in it, several comforting moments and
an officially Happy Ending, but there has been
a hefty sprinkling of disturbing elements along
the way. In fairy-tales, there usually is –
especially in Grimm’s fairy tales.
The German brothers Jacob Ludwig
(1785 – 1863) and Wilhelm Carl Grimm
(1786 – 1859) were distinguished academics
and, before the term was coined, folklorists.
They published important volumes on
German grammar, vocabulary and usage,
but their most famous work was the jointly
collected and edited Kinder- und Hausmärchen
of 1812, which has come down to modern
generations as the frequently reprinted Grimm’s
Fairy Tales. Before their time, only a small
number of what we now know as fairy tales
had been published in any language, but the
success of their version encouraged many other
collections to be made throughout Europe,
spawning a new and highly influential literary
genre. They were timely, too, in that profound
changes in European society during the
nineteenth century meant that many of these
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 12-13
orally reproduced folk stories would, within
a generation or two, lose their currency and
eventually disappear. The Brothers Grimm
and their followers saved a good deal of this
material from being lost forever.
Hansel and Gretel appeared in the very first
edition of their tales. It is an even crueller
story than the adaptation of it made by
Humperdinck’s sister, Adelheid Wette, which
eventually became his most famous opera.
Hansel and Gretel’s father and mother (the
latter metamorphosed into the slightly less
upsetting stepmother in the second and
subsequent editions) are so poor that they
agree to ‘lose’ their children in the forest in
order to have enough food for themselves to
eat. It is the mother who comes up with this
idea and persuades her reluctant spouse to go
along with it. Hansel’s cleverness saves him
and his sister on the first attempt (he drops
shiny pebbles along the path, enabling them
to return the same way), but on the second
he uses breadcrumbs, and of course the birds
eat them. Thoroughly lost, they discover the
witch’s house and its owner, and despatch her
more or less as in the opera (though without
releasing any gingerbread children), then
somehow manage to find their way home,
where they are undoubtedly relieved to find
that their mother/stepmother has in the
meantime died.
It doesn’t take much of a Freudian to pick
up on the unstated connection in this dark
little tale between the mother/stepmother
figure and the witch, especially given the
demise of the former at roughly the same
time as the latter. This psychological
relationship is highlighted in performances
of the opera in which the two roles are sung
by the same singer, though that was not
Humperdinck’s intention and is not followed
on this recording. Another performance
tradition, especially common in Germany,
is to have the role of the witch sung by a
tenor in drag. They’re both interesting ideas,
though obviously mutually exclusive. That the
Wette/Humperdinck version not only allows
Gertrud to live but to rejoice in the reunion
with her children gives their ending a warmheartedness that is as profound in its way as
the grim Grimm version, and clearly more
likely to ensure stage popularity.
Humperdinck’s opera belongs to a
sub-category of German opera called the
Märchenoper, or in this instance Märchenspiel
(literally ‘fairy-tale play’: as we shall see,
Hansel and Gretel was not originally an
opera at all). The tradition developed in the
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wake of the revival of interest in the folk or
fairy-tale instigated by the Brothers Grimm,
and reached its full flowering in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. A
number of composers specialised in it, notably
Humperdinck himself, who also went to
the Brothers Grimm for Die sieben Geislein
(The Seven Young Kids) in 1895, to the
earlier French fairy-tale collector Perrault for
Dornröschen (The Sleeping Beauty) in 1902,
and to an invented folk-tale by Ernst Rosmer
(pseudonym of the dramatist Else BernsteinPorges, who survived the concentration camp
of Terezín, dying in 1949 at the age of 82)
for Königskinder (final version 1910). The
other major exponent was Richard Wagner’s
son Siegfried (1869–1930), who was himself
influenced by Humperdinck. Several of his
eighteen operas are Märchenopern, a genre
he explored not for escapist fantasy but as a
means of dealing with difficult moral and
emotional issues. Recent revivals of pieces such
as Schwarzschwanenreich (The Kingdom of
the Black Swan, 1910) and Der Friedensengel
(The Angel of Peace, 1914) show him to have
sometimes had an individual and worthwhile
voice of his own, unfortunately drowned out
by the tremendous noise made by his much
greater father.
Adelheid Wette’s original request to her
brother was merely for settings of songs for
a play based on Hansel and Gretel (some of
the simpler passages in the opera, including
those that draw on actual folksongs, reflect
these beginnings). Later on the piece was
expanded into a Singspiel, or opera with
dialogue. The final stage was a further
expansion into a through-composed opera,
with some substantial orchestral sections. The
miracle is that the end-result is so consistent.
So skilful are Humperdinck’s transitions that
no joins are noticeable. It’s a perfect example
of his mentor Wagner’s dictum that the art of
composition is the art of transition.
Interestingly, Königskinder (Royal
Children), Humperdinck’s second best-known
opera, developed along similar lines, being
initially conceived as incidental music to a
play in 1894. This was subsequently reworked
(1897) as a melodrama (i.e. speech over music),
utilising the technique of Sprechgesang –
later taken up by Schoenberg and Berg, in
which the words are notated exactly from a
rhythmical point of view, but left much more
vague as to pitch – before going on to achieve
its final form as a full-scale opera in 1910.
Königskinder is not often revived, but when it
is the score proves to be rich and fascinating.
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The likeliest reason for its lack of wider
success is that its tone is so much darker than
that of Hansel and Gretel. The ‘royal children’
of the title – their symbolic nobility is not
inherited in the case of one of the pair, but in
some mysterious sense innate – are dead by the
end. Perhaps audiences prefer happy endings
after all. Judging from the quality of these two
works, it seems probable that we ignore the
rest of Humperdinck’s output to our loss. Like
other ‘one-opera composers’ such as Mascagni
and Leoncavallo, he was the victim of his
first success. Everyone simply wanted another
Hansel and Gretel. That too is understandable.
Richard Strauss hailed the score as a
masterpiece as soon as he read it through; and
he knew a good thing when he saw one.
But Humperdinck nevertheless enjoyed a
long and distinguished career as a composer
and teacher. A brief résumé may be in order.
He was born in Siegburg, near Cologne,
in 1854. He started piano lessons at seven
and after seeing his first opera at the age of
fourteen began to compose his own. Though
Engelbert’s father opposed his musical
ambitions, he allowed him to enrol at the
Cologne Conservatory when he was eighteen.
He studied conscientiously for several
years with minor masters such as Hiller,
Rheinberger and Lachner, and won a series of
prizes. Even more important was his meeting
in 1880 with Richard Wagner, which led to an
invitation to Bayreuth, where Humperdinck
acted as Wagner’s musical assistant in the
preparation of the first performances of
Parsifal in 1882.
His own career combined periods as a
teacher and critic, but his fortunes changed
with the success of his fairy-tale opera Hansel
and Gretel, which reached the stage just
before Christmas 1893. Its reception was
spectacular – within a year at least seventytwo theatres had taken the work up – and it
has gone on to become a permanent feature
of the operatic repertoire.
Thereafter he continued to produce operas,
mainly comic or written in the fairy-tale
tradition of which Hansel and Gretel remains
the most significant example. In 1910 the
New York Metropolitan gave the premiere
of his Königskinder – a fact that on its own
demonstrates his huge international renown
at the time. His next major work took him
to London, and was written at the request
of the great theatre director Max Reinhardt.
Based on a medieval legend turned into a
drama by Karl Vollmöller, the spectacular
The Miracle, premiered in the exhibition
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halls at Olympia in 1911, and to which
Humperdinck contributed an accompanying
score, told the story of a nun who deserts her
order to experience life, but finds on returning
penitent that she has not been missed
because her place has been taken by the
Virgin Mary. Reinhardt’s production, which
involved thousands of performers nightly, was
revived in New York in 1924 and has been
filmed twice. Humperdinck’s other works
include incidental music for plays (notably
a Shakespeare sequence again written for
Reinhardt), choral pieces, songs and chamber
music. He died in Neustrelitz, not far from
Berlin, in 1921.
It was Richard Strauss – a great opera
conductor as well as a great opera composer –
who conducted the fi rst performance of
Hansel and Gretel at the Court Theatre
in Weimar the night before Christmas
Eve in 1893. On Boxing Day 1894, it
was performed for the fi rst time in the
United Kingdom, at Daly’s Theatre in
London, when it was presented in English.
Given a theatrical run, it reached its 100th
performance there the following April.
When Daly’s was needed for another show,
Hansel and Gretel transferred to the Gaiety,
where it was presented in matinées in
tandem with Mozart’s early comedy Bastien
and Bastienne. Later on it moved to the
Princess’s Theatre, then to the Savoy. Covent
Garden audiences fi rst heard it in 1896,
when it was again sung in English. In 1923,
it became the fi rst opera to be broadcast in
Europe when the English-language British
National Opera Company performance at
Covent Garden was relayed by the BBC.
The work received its American premiere
at Daly’s Theatre in New York on 8 October
1895, again sung in English. It entered
the repertoire of the Metropolitan on
25 November 1905 (the composer attended
the fi rst performance), and on Christmas
Day 1931 became the fi rst opera to be
broadcast live from the Met, once more
sung in English. Highly successful recent
productions in the UK have included David
Pountney’s version for English National
Opera, which opened at the London
Coliseum on 16 December 1987 and was
fi rst conducted by Mark Elder, and Richard
Jones’s staging for Welsh National Opera,
which was fi rst conducted by Vladimir
Jurowski and opened at the New Theatre,
Cardiff, on 10 December 1998.
© 2007 George Hall
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 16-17
Synopsis
by baking them alive! They rush off together to
look for the children.
COMPACT DISC ONE
Act II
In the forest
10
Prelude. 11 – 12 In the woods Gretel is
making a garland of flowers, while Hansel
collects the wild strawberries and eats them.
When the strawberries have all been eaten the
children begin to search for more, but it has
grown dark 13 and they realise that they are
lost. A thick mist rises and the children become
frightened, 14 but the mist clears to reveal a
little Sandman, who sprinkles sleeping dust in
the children’s eyes. 15 After they have said their
evening prayer they fall asleep together. The
mist envelops them and becomes a staircase of
clouds, and fourteen angels descend to guard
the children through the night. 16 Pantomime.
Overture
Act I
In the broom-maker’s house
Left at home by their parents, Hansel is at
work for his father making brooms while his
sister Gretel knits stockings. 2 – 4 Gretel
distracts her brother by singing a song; Hansel
joins in, and soon the two are singing and
dancing. 5 – 6 When their mother Gertrude
returns, she makes an angry scene at how little
work the children have done and accidentally
knocks over the jug of milk. Furious, she sends
the children out to pick wild strawberries from
the forest, before sitting down and falling
asleep, exhausted.
1
COMPACT DISC TWO
The children’s father, Peter, comes home in
a triumphant mood. He has managed to sell all
his brooms and has brought home food. The
parents dance happily round the room. 8 – 9
When Peter learns that the children are not at
home, and have been sent into the wood to
pick berries, he is horrified: the forest is the
home of the Witch, who lures children into
her cottage only to turn them into gingerbread
7
Act III
The gingerbread house
1
Introduction. 2 – 3 As dawn breaks, the
Dew Fairy comes to wake the children, shaking
dew drops over them. 4 As they play, the
mist clears and they see a gingerbread cottage
surrounded by a fence of gingerbread figures.
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for her performances in the coloratura
roles of the baroque and bel canto. She has
been particularly associated with the role
of Rosina (The Barber of Seville) which she
has performed at the Metropolitan Opera,
the Staatsoper in Berlin, in Bonn, Paris, San
Francisco and Buenos Aires.
Other roles include Giovanna Seymour
(Anna Bolena) in Nice; Mélisande (Pelléas et
Mélisande) in Marseilles; Isolier (Le Comte
Ory) at La Scala, Milan; Dorabella (Così
fan tutte) at the Salzburg Festival; Romeo
(I Capuleti e i Montecchi) at New York’s
Carnegie Hall, at the Opéra de Paris-Bastille
and in Geneva; The Italian Girl in Algiers at
the Deutsche Oper, Berlin and in Paris and
Vienna; Ruggiero (Alcina) with Chicago
Lyric Opera; Sesto (La clemenzo di Tito) at
the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona; the
title role in Carmen with Washington Opera;
Giulio Cesare at the Metropolitan Opera and
in Madrid; the title role in Orfeo in Madrid;
Orlovsky (Die Fledermaus) in Japan and at
the Metropolitan Opera, Hansel (Hansel and
Gretel) at the Metropolitan Opera and the
BBC Proms concerts; Giulietta (Les Contes
d’Hoffmann) at the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden, and the title role in La
Cenerentola at the Metropolitan Opera.
Originally from
Atlanta, Jennifer
Larmore (Hansel)
studied at the
Westminster Choir
College of Princeton,
New Jersey and then
privately with John
Bullock and Regina
Resnik. She is famous
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 18-19
Jennifer Larmore has made over seventy
recordings to date, something which has
earned her the distinction of being the most
recorded mezzo-soprano of all time. These
recordings include a disc of Great Operatic
Arias for Chandos’ Opera in English series, as
well as Lucia di Lammermoor, Julius Caesar,
Orfeo, The Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola,
and, for Opera Rara, L’incoronazione di Poppea,
Bianca e Falliero, Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra,
Francesca di Foix, and Adelaide di Borgogna.
In 2002 Jennifer Larmore was appointed
a Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres in
recognition of her contribution to the world
of music.
Sian Trenberth
Douglas Robertson
5 – 6
As they pick at the gingerbread the
witch sneaks up on them and throws a rope
around Hansel’s neck. 7 – 9 As he tries
to break free, the witch casts a spell on the
children. She locks Hansel in the stable and
sends Gretel indoors to set the table. 10 But
Gretel has remembered the witch’s spell and
uses it to free her brother.
The witch asks Gretel to check the oven, but
Gretel pretends to be stupid and asks the witch
to show her what to do. Quickly the children
push her into the oven and slam the door.
11 – 12
The oven explodes and the gingerbread
figures on the fence turn back into the children
they had been before they were baked. 13
Hansel and Gretel’s parents arrive, and amid
much happiness all discover that the witch has
been turned into a gingerbread cake.
(Sweeney Todd ). A regular guest at the Bayerische
Staatsoper, Munich, her roles there have
included Nannetta conducted by Zubin Mehta,
Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier), Zdenka (Arabella),
Servilia (La clemenza di Tito), Ilia (Idomeneo)
and Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro). She has sung
Ilia for the Netherlands Opera and Opéra de
Lausanne; the title role in The Cunning Little
Vixen for Scottish Opera; Pamina, Susanna, Ilia,
Marzellina (Fidelio), Norina (Don Pasquale) and
Hero (Beatrice and Benedict) for Welsh National
Opera, and Romilda (Xerxes) and Ginevra
(Ariodante) for English National Opera.
She has also established a major operatic
career in America where she has sung Susanna
and Zerlina for the Metropolitan Opera, New
York; Susanna for the Santa Fe Opera; Pamina
and Adèle (Die Fledermaus) for the Lyric Opera
of Chicago; and Zerlina, Anne Trulove
(The Rake’s Progress) and Adina (L’elisir d’amore)
for San Francisco Opera.
Concert appearances include the BBC Proms
and the Edinburgh International Festival; Gala
Concerts with Andrea Bocelli and with Luciano
Pavarotti; and appearances at the Melbourne
International Festival. In recital, she has sung
at London’s Wigmore Hall and the Barcelona,
Ravinia, Buxton, Belfast and Beaulieu-sur Mer
Festivals.
Rebecca Evans (Gretel)
was born in South
Wales and studied at
the Guildhall School
of Music and Drama.
She received support
from the Peter Moores
Foundation to study
with Ronald Schneider
in Berlin. At the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, she has
sung Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Zerlina (Don
Giovanni), Nannetta (Falstaff ) and Johanna
19
30/4/07 10:02:36
Rosalind Plowright
(the Mother) has
performed in virtually
every major opera
house in the world
including new
productions at Covent
Garden, English
National Opera, in
Paris, Hamburg,
Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, at the Vienna
State Opera, in Athens, at the Metropolitan
Opera, in San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, San
Diego, Carnegie Hall, La Scala Milan, Verona,
Florence, La Fenice, Barcelona, Buenos Aires
and Santiago.
Robert Hayward (the
Father) studied at the
Guildhall School of
Music and Drama and
at the National Opera
Studio, and made his
professional opera
debut singing the title
role in Don Giovanni
for Glyndebourne
Touring Opera. He has performed at the Royal
Opera House, English National Opera, Welsh
National Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera,
Glyndebourne Festival and Touring Opera,
Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Houston Grand
Opera, New Israeli Opera, and Minnesota
Fritz Curzon
Rosalind Plowright returned to Covent
Garden for Sweeney Todd and made her debut
in the Maggio Musicale in Firenze in two
operas by Luigi Dallapiccola. Recordings
include Queen Elizabeth I (Mary Stuart),
Desdemona (Otello) and Amneris (Aida) for
Chandos’ Opera in English series, as well as
La forza del destino alongside José Carreras,
Il trovatore alongside Placido Domingo,
Mendelssohn’s Elijah (for Chandos), La Vestale,
Les Contes d’Hoffmann, and Mahler’s Second
Symphony.
Fritz Curzon
Recordings include Marzellina (Fidelio),
Pamina (The Magic Flute), Susanna
(The Marriage of Figaro) and Ilia (Idomeneo)
for Chandos’ Opera in English series, as well
as Nannetta (Falstaff ) with Sir John Eliot
Gardiner, a series of Gilbert and Sullivan
recordings with Sir Charles Mackerras and a
solo recording of Italian songs. She also sang
Belinda in the film of Dido and Aeneas (also
released on Chandos), and hosted her own
BBC television series ‘A Touch of Classics’ with
the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 20-21
Opera in a wide repertoire including Wotan
and the Wanderer in the Ring, Amfortas
(Parsifal), Jokanaan (Salome), Figaro and
Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), the
title roles in The Flying Dutchman, Mazeppa,
Saul, Eugene Onegin and Don Giovanni, Iago
(Otello), Ford (Falstaff ), Scarpia (Tosca),
Marcello (La bohème), Escamillo (Carmen),
Nick Shadow (The Rake’s Progress), Golaud
(Pelléas et Mélisande) and Wotan/Wanderer in
English National Opera’s Ring cycle.
Concert engagements have included
Belshazzar’s Feast, Tippett’s The Mask of
Time, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony and Haydn’s Creation, The
Dream of Gerontius, Mozart’s Requiem, and
Das klagende Lied and Lieder eines fahrenden
Gesellen. Recordings include Dr Schön (Lulu)
as part of Chandos’ Opera in English series,
and The Pilgrim’s Progress, also for Chandos.
(Elektra) for the San
Francisco Opera;
the Principessa (Suor
Angelica) with the
Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra and Chailly;
Dialogues des Carmélites
in Amsterdam; the
Kostelnička (Jenůfa)
under Ozawa in Japan,
and the Kabanicka (Katya Kabanova) for the
Salzburg Festival.
For The Royal Opera, Covent Garden
she has sung Fricka and Waltraute, Ul rica
(Un ballo in maschera), Klytemnestra, Mrs
Grose (The Turn of the Screw); at La Scala,
Milan she has sung Herodias (Salome),
and Cassandre (Les Troyens). Her roles at
the Bavarian State Opera, Munich include
Herodias, Klytemnestra, Ulrica, Mistress
Quickly (Falstaff ) and Ortrud (Lohengrin);
at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin Klytemnestra,
Herodias and Ortrud , and at the Vienna
State Opera Klytemnestra, Fricka and Mistress
Quickly. It is the Amme (Die Frau ohne
Schatten) which has become her signature role,
which she has sung in Amsterdam, London,
Los Angeles, Munich, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and
at the Metropolitan Opera.
Jane Henschel (the Witch) was born in
Wisconsin, studied at the University of
Southern California and subsequently moved
to Germany. Roles include Baba the Turk
(The Rake’s Progress) at Glyndebourne, Saito
Kinen and Salzburg Festivals; Brangäne
(Tristan and Isolde) for the Los Angeles
Opera and the Paris Opéra; Klytemnestra
21
30/4/07 10:02:38
of Russia; and Elsie Maynard (The Yeomen of
the Guard) and Gianetta (The Gondoliers) for
Phoenix Opera.
She has recorded the roles of Sister
Constance (The Carmelites) and Barbarina
(The Marriage of Figaro) for Chandos’ Opera
in English series.
Jane Henschel’s recordings include Krasa’s
Verlobung im Traum, The Rake’s Progress,
Albéniz’ Merlin, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw,
and Mahler’s Eighth Symphony.
Mike Hoban
John Clark
Sarah Tynan (the Dew
Fairy) was born in
London and studied
at the Royal Northern
College of Music and
the Royal Academy of
Music (with Penelope
Mackay). At the Royal
Academy she was
awarded the Queen’s
Commendation for Excellence.
Since joining English National Opera as a
Company Principal her roles have included
Tytania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream),
Papagena (The Magic Flute), Iphis (Jephtha),
Atalanta (Xerxes), Yum-Yum (The Mikado)
and Sister Constance (The Carmelites). Other
operatic engagements include Tytania for La
Monnaie Brussels; Bella (The Midsummer
Marriage) for St Endellion Festival with
Richard Hickox; Pretty Polly in Birtwistle’s
Punch and Judy at the Teatro Nacional San
João in Porto; the Governess in Britten’s The
Turn of the Screw for a British Council tour
22
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 22-23
Diana Montague (the
Sandman) was born in
Winchester and studied
at the Royal Northern
College of Music. Since
her debut as Zerlina
with Glyndebourne
Touring Opera she has
appeared at the Royal
Opera House, Covent
Garden, the Metropolitan Opera in New York,
the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the
Opéra national de Paris-Bastille, Teatro Colón
in Buenos Aires and the Bayreuth and Salzburg
Festivals.
Her repertory includes the major roles for
mezzo-soprano in operas by Mozart, Gluck,
Strauss, Rossini, Bellini and Berlioz, and
engagements have included Benvenuto Cellini
with Rome Opera; Iphigénie en Tauride
in Buenos Aires, Madrid and with Welsh
National Opera; Albert Herring, Cherubino
(Le nozze di Figaro) and Andromaca in
Rossini’s Ermione at Glyndebourne; Le Comte
Ory in Lausanne, Rome and Glyndebourne;
Proserpina in Monteverdi’s Orfeo in
Amsterdam; Ariadne auf Naxos in Lisbon;
Marguerite (La Damnation de Faust) in
Vienna and Geneva; Minerva
(Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria) in Amsterdam and
Sydney; Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the
Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Junon
in Rameau’s Platée with The Royal Opera
at the Edinburgh Festival and in London,
and Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier) at English
National Opera, in Bilbao and at the Teatro
Real in Madrid;
Diana Montague’s many recordings
include Monteverdi’s Orfeo, I Capuleti e i
Montecchi, Norma, Iphigénie en Tauride; for
Opera Rara Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Zoraida
di Granata and Il crociato in Egitto; and, as
part of Chandos’ Opera in English series,
Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro), Idamante
(Idomeneo), Cavalleria rusticana, Octavian in
Der Rosenkavalier (highlights), Faust, and two
recital discs of Great Operatic Arias.
Corp in 1991 with the aim of introducing
children to the challenges and fun of singing
and performing all types of music. The Choir
has made dozens of recordings and broadcasts,
and has been invited to appear at many major
festivals.
Highlights of the Choir’s concert activities
have included Mahler Symphony No. 8 with
the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the
Royal Albert Hall, Mahler’s Third Symphony
with the London Symphony Orchestra at the
Barbican, Carmina Burana with the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival
Hall and with The Bach Choir at the Royal
Festival Hall, and three Blue Peter Proms.
The extensive discography of the New
London Children’s Choir encompasses
Turandot and Carmen as part of Chandos’
Opera in English series, Tchaikovsky’s
Nutcracker, Shostakovich’s Song of the Forests,
Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible, and Britten’s
St Nicolas.
One of the world’s great orchestras, the
Philharmonia Orchestra is now in its tenth
season with renowned German maestro
Christoph von Dohnányi as Principal
Conductor. That post was first held by Otto
Klemperer, and the Orchestra has since had
The New London Children’s Choir was
launched by its Musical Director Ronald
23
30/4/07 10:02:41
important collaborations with Lorin Maazel (as
Associate Principal Conductor), Riccardo Muti
(as Principal Conductor and Music Director),
Giuseppe Sinopoli (as Music Director) and,
currently, Kurt Sanderling (as Conductor
Emeritus), Vladimir Ashkenazy (as Conductor
Laureate) and Sir Charles Mackerras (as
Principal Guest Conductor), besides such
eminent figures as Wilhelm Furtwängler,
Richard Strauss, Arturo Toscanini, Guido
Cantelli, Herbert von Karajan and Carlo
Maria Giulini. It continues to engage worldclass conductors and soloists, and attracts
Europe’s most talented young players to join its
orchestral ranks.
Resident Orchestra at the Royal Festival
Hall, it maintains a central position in British
musical life also through regional residencies
which provide an ideal opportunity to expand
a dynamic educational and community-based
programme. Winner of numerous awards, it
has garnered unanimous critical acclaim for its
innovative programming policy, at the heart
of which is a commitment to performing and
commissioning new music by today’s leading
composers.
An increasing number of the Orchestra’s
concerts are being broadcast by BBC Radio 3,
including its annual performance at the BBC
Proms. As the world’s most recorded symphony
orchestra, with over 1000 releases to its credit,
among these a number of television and feature
film soundtracks, the Philharmonia Orchestra
enjoys a worldwide reputation. The discography
includes, for Opera Rara, several recital discs
as well as numerous complete operas, and
for Chandos, in the Opera in English series
sponsored by the Peter Moores Foundation,
The Marriage of Figaro, The Thieving Magpie,
Wozzeck, Don Giovanni, The Elixir of Love,
Lucia of Lammermoor, Faust, Carmen, Aida,
La Bohème, Madam Butterfly, Turandot,
the award-winning Tosca and solo recital
albums of operatic arias with Bruce Ford,
Diana Montague, Dennis O’Neill, Alastair
Miles, Yvonne Kenny and John Tomlinson.
The Philharmonia Orchestra continues to
consolidate its international renown through
regular tours and through prestigious
residencies at the Châtelet Théâtre Musical in
Paris, the Megaron in Athens and the Lincoln
Center for the Performing Arts in New York.
Sir Charles Mackerras studied at the Sydney
Conservatorium of Music and came to
England in 1947. He gained a British Council
Scholarship to study further at the Academy
of Music in Prague. His great interest and
24
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 24-25
love for Janáček
commenced in 1947
on hearing Katya
Kabanova conducted
by the great Václav
Talich.
As an assistant
conductor at Sadler’s
Wells in 1951 he gave
the first performance
of Katya Kabanova in the English-speaking
world. Later he introduced The Makropulos
Case and From the House of the Dead at
Sadler’s Wells and continued conducting
highly successful productions of Janáček’s
operas as well as more standard repertoire
when he became Musical Director of English
National Opera (1970 – 77) and for Welsh
National Opera when he became their
Musical Director (1987 – 1992). He has been
a pioneer in the dissemination of the music
of Janáček throughout the capitals of Europe
and in the USA and Australia. Jenůfa has been
a particular favourite.
He has had a long association with the
Czech Philharmonic and recorded most of
Janáček’s orchestral works with them as well
as Katya Kabanova and Dvořák’s Rusalka.
Included in his vast discography is an award-
winning cycle of the Janáček operas with the
Vienna Philharmonic in the early 1980s. For
Chandos he has recorded Janáček Glagolitic
Mass in the original version and Kodály’s
Psalmus Hungaricus. As part of the Opera
in English series he has recorded Osud, La
traviata, Werther, Julius Caesar, Mary Stuart,
Eugene Onegin, Jenůfa, The Magic Flute, The
Bartered Bride and The Makropulkos Case.
Sir Charles has also undertaken much
research into the music of the eighteenth
century, particularly Handel and Mozart. He
has recorded a series of Mozart and Gilbert
and Sullivan operas as well as a complete
series of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms
Symphonies, several oratorios by Handel
and symphonies by Mahler and Elgar. He is
at present Principal Guest Conductor of the
Philharmonia Orchestra, Conductor Laureate
of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and
Conductor Emeritus of Welsh National Opera
and the San Francisco Opera.
Sir Charles received a CBE in 1974,
was knighted in 1979, honoured with the
Medal of Merit from the Czech Republic in
1996 and made a Companion of the Order
of Australia in 1997. In 2003 he became
a Companion of Honour in the Queen’s
Birthday Honours.
25
30/4/07 10:02:43
British philanthropist Sir Peter Moores established the Peter Moores Foundation in 1964 to
realise his charitable aims and, to fulfill one of these, the Compton Verney House Trust in
1993 to create a new art gallery in the country. Through his charities he has disbursed many
millions to a wide variety of arts, environmental and social causes ‘to get things done and
open doors for people’.
Sir Peter’s philanthropic work began with his passion for opera: in his twenties he helped a
number of young artists in the crucial, early stages of their careers, several of whom – Dame
Joan Sutherland, Sir Colin Davis and the late Sir Geraint Evans amongst them – became
world-famous.
Today, the Peter Moores Foundation supports talented young singers with scholarships,
has made it possible for Chandos Records to issue the world’s largest catalogue of operas
recorded in English translation, and enabled Opera Rara to record rare bel canto repertoire
which would otherwise remain inaccessible to the general public.
In live performance, the Foundation has encouraged the creation of new work and schemes
to attract new audiences, financed the publication of scores, especially for world premieres
of modern operas, and enabled rarely heard works to be staged by British opera companies
and festivals.
Projects supported by the Foundation to help the young have ranged from a scheme
to encourage young Afro-Caribbeans ‘stay at school’ for further education, to the
endowment of a Faculty Directorship and Chair of Management Studies at Oxford
26
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 26-27
University (providing the lead donation which paved the way for the development of the
Said Business School).
In 1993 the Foundation bought Compton Verney, a Grade I Georgian mansion in
Warwickshire, designed by Robert Adam, with grounds by Capability Brown. Compton
Verney House Trust was set up by Sir Peter to transform the derelict mansion into a worldclass art gallery that would provide an especially welcoming environment for the ‘first-time’
gallery visitor. The gallery, which houses six permanent collections, a Learning Centre for all
ages, and facilities for major visiting exhibitions, was opened in March 2004 by HRH the
Prince of Wales. The Compton Verney website can be found at: www.comptonverney.org.uk
Sir Peter Moores was born in Lancashire and educated at Eton College and Christ Church,
Oxford. He was a student at the Vienna Academy of Music, where he produced the Austrian
premiere of Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and at the same time was an assistant
producer with the Vienna State Opera, working with Viennese artists in Naples, Geneva and
Rome, before returning to England in 1957 to join his father’s business, Littlewoods. He
was Vice-Chairman of Littlewoods in 1976, Chairman from 1977 to 1980 and remained a
director until 1993.
He received the Gold Medal of the Italian Republic in 1974, an Honorary MA from Christ
Church, Oxford, in 1975, and was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Northern
College of Music in 1985. In 1992 he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire by
HM the Queen. He was appointed CBE in 1991 and received a Knighthood in 2003 for his
charitable services to the arts.
27
30/4/07 10:02:46
Hänsel, Gretel und Humperdinck
Es wird gelegentlich gefragt, ob Hänsel
und Gretel wirklich eine Oper für Kinder
oder doch eher für Erwachsene ist. Die
Antwort lautet natürlich, daß sie für beide
gedacht ist. Kinder erfreuen sich an den
einfachen Liedern und Singespielen, an der
tobenden komisch–grotesken Hexe mit ihren
monströsen Eßgewohnheiten und an den
übernatürlichen Erscheinungen, die in der
Sequenz der Traumpantomime kulminieren,
bei der in traditionellen Inszenierungen
vierzehn Engel eine Treppe herabsteigen, um
über die im nächtlichen Wald schlafenden
Kinder zu wachen. Aber auch das Kind in
jedem Erwachsenen wird von solchen Dingen
beglückt sein. Erwachsene genießen zudem
Humperdincks reiche Orchestrierung und
feinsinnige Harmonik, seine durchwegs
ausgeprägte melodische Erfindungsgabe und
meisterhafte Beherrschung des Kontrapunkts
sowie die erstaunliche Bandbreite von
Stimmungen und Satztechniken, die sich
von einer Wagnerhaften Komplexität bis
zur überbordenden Begeisterung und
tänzerischen Leichtigkeit eines Johann
Strauß erstreckt. Doch auch Kinder werden
– selbst wenn sie noch nie etwas von Wagner
oder Kontrapunktik gehört haben – diese
Elemente zumindest unbewußt mit Vergnügen
registrieren. Hänsel und Gretel ist wahrlich eine
Oper für jedermann.
Schwieriger zu beantworten ist die Frage,
ob dieses Märchen für Kinder geeignet
ist – oder ob Märchen im allgemeinen
für Kinder oder gar Erwachsene geeignet
sind. In Humperdincks Oper steckt viel
Komödiantisches, sie enthält auch einige
tröstliche Momente, und sie hat ein offizielles
Happy End; in ihrem Verlauf jedoch tauchen
eine ganze Reihe von verstörenden Elementen
auf. Das ist typisch für Märchen, vor allem für
Märchen der Gebrüder Grimm.
Die Brüder Jacob Ludwig (1785 –1863)
und Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786 –1859)
waren eminente Gelehrte und – noch bevor
dieser Begriff geprägt wurde – Völkerkundler.
Sie veröffentlichten eine Reihe von
grundlegenden Schriften zu Grammatik,
Wortschatz und Gebrauch der deutschen
Sprache, ihr berühmtestes Werk waren jedoch
die gemeinsam gesammelten und 1812
herausgegebenen Kinder- und Hausmärchen,
28
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 28-29
die auch in moderner Zeit noch unter dem
Titel Grimms Märchen weithin bekannt sind
und immer wieder neu aufgelegt werden.
Vor ihrer Zeit war auch in anderen Sprachen
nur eine kleine Zahl von dem, was wir heute
als Märchen kennen, veröffentlicht worden,
doch der Erfolg ihrer Bücher regte in ganz
Europa zahlreiche weitere Sammlungen an
und legte so den Grundstein zu einer neuen,
sehr einflußreichen literarischen Gattung.
Dies geschah gerade noch zur rechten Zeit,
denn die tiefgreifenden Veränderungen, die
sich im 19. Jahrhundert in der europäischen
Gesellschaft vollzogen, führten dazu, daß viele
dieser mündlich überlieferten Volksmärchen
innerhalb von ein bis zwei Generationen
nicht mehr tradiert wurden und schließlich in
Vergessenheit geraten wären. Die Gebrüder
Grimm und ihre Nachahmer retteten ein
Großteil dieses Schatzes vor dem Vergessen.
Hänsel und Gretel erschien in der allerersten
Ausgabe von Grimms Märchen. Die
ursprüngliche Geschichte ist noch grausamer
als die von Humperdincks Schwester Adelheid
Wette geschaffene Bearbeitung, die seine
berühmteste Oper werden sollte. Hänsel
und Gretels Vater und Mutter (aus der in
der zweiten und späteren Ausgaben die etwas
weniger verstörende Stiefmutter werden sollte)
sind so arm, daß sie beschließen, die Kinder
im Wald zu “verlieren”, um wenigstens für
sich selbst genug Nahrung zum Überleben
zu haben. Diese Idee hat ausgerechnet die
Mutter, die ihren widerstrebenden Gatten
überredet, sich ihr anzuschließen. Beim
ersten Versuch werden die Kinder durch
Hänsels klugen Einfall gerettet, glänzende
Kiesel auf den Pfad zu streuen, die ihnen den
Weg nach Hause weisen; beim zweiten Mal
jedoch benutzt er Brotkrumen, die natürlich
von den Vögeln gefressen werden. Tief im
Wald verirrt, entdecken sie das Hexenhaus
und seine Besitzerin und befördern sie mehr
oder weniger wie in der Oper geschildert
ins Jenseits (allerdings ohne irgendwelche
Lebkuchenkinder zu befreien), bevor es
ihnen gelingt, den Heimweg zu finden; zu
Hause erfahren sie mit Erleichterung, daß
ihre Mutter/Stiefmutter in der Zwischenzeit
gestorben ist.
Man muß kein großer Freudianer sein,
um in dieser düsteren kleinen Geschichte
die – nicht explizit erwähnte – Verbindung
zwischen der Figur der Mutter/Stiefmutter
und der Hexe zu ziehen, zumal die beiden
ja auch etwa zur gleichen Zeit umkommen.
Diese psychologische Verbindung wird
besonders in Inszenierungen betont, in
29
30/4/07 10:02:47
denen die beiden Rollen von derselben
Sängerin ausgeführt werden; dies war
allerdings nicht Humperdincks Intention
und entspricht auch nicht der Besetzung in
der vorliegenden Einspielung. Eine andere
– besonders in Deutschland häufig zu findende
– Aufführungstradition besetzt die Rolle mit
einem Tenor in Frauenkleidern. Beides sind
interessante Varianten, die sich allerdings
offensichtlich gegenseitig ausschließen. Die
Fassung von Wette und Humperdinck erlaubt
Gertrud nicht nur, am Leben zu bleiben, sie
darf sich sogar über das Wiedersehen mit ihren
Kindern freuen, und dies verleiht dem Ende
des Werks eine Warmherzigkeit, die ebenso
ergreifend ist wie die düstere Grimmsche
Fassung und dem Bühnenwerk sicherlich
größere Popularität verlieh.
Humperdincks Komposition gehört
einer Unterkategorie der deutschen Oper
an, die als Märchenoper oder in diesem
Fall als Märchenspiel bezeichnet wird; wie
wir sehen werden, war Hänsel und Gretel
ursprünglich keine wirkliche Oper. Die
Tradition entwickelte sich infolge des von den
Brüdern Grimm wiedererweckten Interesses
an Märchen oder Volksmärchen und erreichte
ihre Blütezeit im späten 19. und frühen 20.
Jahrhundert. Eine Reihe von Komponisten
spezialisierten sich auf diese Gattung, nicht
zuletzt Humperdinck selbst, der auch für Die
sieben Geislein (1895) auf die Brüder Grimm
zurückgriff, sich für seine 1902 entstandene
Oper Dornröschen an den älteren französischen
Märchensammler Perrault wandte und
für die Königskinder (letzte Fassung 1910)
den Stoff eines Kunstmärchens von Ernst
Rosmer verarbeitete – ein Pseudonym der
Dramatikerin Else Bernstein-Porges, die
das Konzentrationslager von Theresienstadt
überlebte und 1949 im Alter von 82
Jahren starb. Der andere wichtige Vertreter
dieser Gattung war Richard Wagners Sohn
Siegfried (1869–1930), der wiederum von
Humperdinck beeinflußt war. Unter seinen
insgesamt achtzehn Opern finden sich mehrere
Märchenopern, wobei er diese Gattung nicht
zur Flucht in eine Fantasiewelt benutzte,
sondern als Mittel zur Darstellung komplexer
moralischer und emotionaler Sachverhalte.
Neuinszenierungen von Werken wie Das
Schwarzschwanenreich (1910) und Der
Friedensengel (1914) haben in jüngerer Zeit
gezeigt, daß er gelegentlich eine eigenständige
und hörenswerte Stimme entwickelte, die aber
unglücklicherweise von dem großen Lärmen
seines viel berühmteren Vaters übertönt
wurde.
30
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 30-31
Ursprünglich hatte Adelheid Wette ihren
Bruder nur darum gebeten, für ein auf Hänsel
und Gretel basierendes Schauspiel eine Reihe
von Liedern zu vertonen (in einigen simpleren
Passagen der Oper – vor allem in solchen, die
von echten Volksliedern abgeleitet sind – sind
diese Anfänge noch zu spüren). Später wurde
das Stück zu einem Singspiel ausgebaut, also
zu einer Oper mit gesprochenen Dialogen. Als
letztes Stadium kam schließlich die Erweiterung
zu einer durchkomponierten Oper mit einigen
ausgedehnten orchestralen Abschnitten. Trotz
dieser komplizierten Entstehungsgeschichte
ist das Resultat erstaunlich geschlossen
und einheitlich ausgefallen. Humperdincks
Überleitungen sind so kunstvoll gearbeitet,
daß keine Bruchstellen mehr erkennbar sind.
Dies ist ein perfektes Beispiel für das Diktum
seines Mentors Wagner, daß die Kunst des
Komponierens in der Kunst der Überleitung
liege.
Auch Humperdincks zweitbekannteste
Oper, Königskinder, durchlief interessanterweise
eine ähnliche Entwicklung – das Werk war
zunächst (1894) als Zwischenaktmusik für ein
Schauspiel gedacht und wurde anschließend
(1897) mithilfe der später von Schoenberg und
Berg aufgegriffenen Technik des Sprechgesangs
zu einem Melodram umgearbeitet; bei dieser
Technik werden die Worte rhythmisch exakt
notiert, während die Tonhöhe nur vage
angedeutet wird. 1910 schließlich erhielt
die Komposition ihre endgültige Form als
vollgültige Oper. Heute werden die Königskinder
nicht mehr oft gegeben, doch wenn das
Werk gespielt wird, erweist die Musik sich als
komplex und faszinierend. Der Mangel an
größerem Erfolg läßt sich am ehesten damit
begründen, daß der Ton dieses Werks so sehr
viel düsterer ist als der von Hänsel und Gretel.
Die im Titel genannten Königskinder – wobei
die symbolische königliche Abstammung eines
der beiden Kinder nicht ererbt ist, sondern
diesem auf mysteriöse Weise innewohnt – sind
am Ende tot. Vielleicht sind dem Publikum
doch grundsätzlich Happy Ends lieber. In
Anbetracht der hohen Qualität dieser beiden
Kompositionen ist es wahrscheinlich zu unserem
Nachteil, daß wir den Rest von Humperdincks
Oeuvre ignorieren. Wie andere “Komponisten
einer einzigen Oper”, etwa Mascagni und
Leoncavallo, wurde auch Humperdinck das
Opfer seines ersten Erfolges. Alle wollten ganz
einfach ein weiteres Hänsel und Gretel. Auch
das ist verständlich. Richard Strauss nannte die
Komposition unmittelbar nach der Lektüre der
Partitur ein Meisterwerk – und er war durchaus
in der Lage, ein solches zu erkennen.
31
30/4/07 10:02:48
Trotzdem aber genoß Humperdinck eine
lange und erfolgreiche Laufbahn als Komponist
und Pädagoge. Ein kurzer Abriß seines Lebens
ist hier angebracht. Engelbert Humperdinck
wurde 1854 im rheinischen Siegburg
geboren und nahm bereits als Siebenjähriger
Klavierunterricht. Mit vierzehn sah er seine
erste Oper und begann sofort, ein eigenes
Werk zu komponieren. Sein Vater lehnte seine
musikalischen Ambitionen zwar ab, erlaubte
dem Achtzehnjährigen aber dennoch, sich am
Kölner Konservatorium einzuschreiben. Dort
studierte er mehrere Jahre gewissenhaft unter
lokalen Berühmtheiten wie Hiller, Rheinberger
und Lachner und gewann eine Reihe von
Auszeichnungen. Von besonderer Bedeutung
war seine Begegnung mit Richard Wagner
im Jahr 1880, die zu einer Einladung nach
Bayreuth führte, wo Humperdinck 1882 bei
der Vorbereitung der ersten Aufführungen von
Parsifal als dessen Assistent wirkte.
In seiner eigenen Laufbahn verband er
zunächst Arbeitsperioden als Pädagoge
und als Kritiker, die Situation änderte sich
jedoch grundsätzlich mit dem Erfolg seiner
Märchenoper Hänsel und Gretel, die kurz vor
Weihnachten 1893 auf die Bühne kam. Die
Aufnahme beim Publikum war spektakulär –
innerhalb eines Jahres hatten 72 Opernhäuser
das Werk in ihren Spielplan aufgenommen
und bis heute hat es sich als Dauerbrenner im
Opernrepertoire gehalten.
Nach diesem Erfolg schrieb Humperdinck
weitere Opern, die entweder komisch waren
oder ebenfalls der Märchentradition folgten,
für die Hänsel und Gretel das wichtigste
Beispiel bleibt. 1910 wurde an der New
Yorker Metropolitan Opera die Premiere
seiner Königskinder gegeben – diese Tatsache
allein zeugt schon von dem ungeheuren
Ruhm, dessen er sich zu dieser Zeit erfreute.
Sein nächstes größeres Werk führte ihn
nach London und entstand im Auftrag des
großen Theaterdirektors Max Reinhardt. Das
Mirakel basiert auf einer mittelalterlichen
Legende, die von Karl Vollmoeller zu einem
Drama verarbeitet wurde, und erzählt die
Geschichte einer Nonne, die ihren Orden
verläßt, um das Leben kennenzulernen; als
sie reumütig zurückkehrt, merkt sie, daß
man sie noch gar nicht vermißt hat, da die
Jungfrau Maria ihren Platz eingenommen
hat. Das Werk, zu dem Humperdinck
die Begleitmusik schrieb, wurde 1911
in den Ausstellungshallen von Olympia
uraufgeführt. Reinhardts Inszenierung,
in der Nacht für Nacht Tausende von
Darstellern eingesetzt wurden, wurde 1924
32
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 32-33
in New York erneut aufgeführt und zweimal
verfi lmt. Zu Humperdincks weiteren
Werken zählen Zwischenaktmusiken für
verschiedene Schauspiele (darunter eine
ebenfalls für Reinhardt geschriebene
Shakespeare-Sequenz), Chorwerke, Lieder
und Kammermusik. Der Komponist starb
1921 in Neustrelitz.
Richard Strauss – ein großer
Operndirigent und großer Opernkomponist
– dirigierte die erste Aufführung von Hänsel
und Gretel am Tag vor Heiligabend 1893
im Weimarer Hoftheater. Am zweiten
Weihnachtstag 1894 wurde das Werk zum
ersten Mal in Großbritannien aufgeführt,
und zwar im Londoner Daly’s Theatre, wo
es in englischer Sprache gegeben wurde. Die
Inszenierung war überaus erfolgreich, und
im darauffolgenden April feierte man die
einhundertste Aufführung in Folge. Als das
Daly’s für eine andere Inszenierung benötigt
wurde, wurde Hänsel und Gretel zum
Gaiety transferiert, wo das Werk zusammen
mit Mozarts früher Komödie Bastien und
Bastienne in Matineen gegeben wurde. Später
wechselte die Oper zum Princess’s Theatre,
dann zum Savoy. Dem Publikum von Covent
Garden wurde sie zum ersten Mal 1896
präsentiert, wiederum in englischer Sprache.
1923 war Hänsel und Gretel die erste im
Rundfunk ausgestrahlte Oper in Europa, als
die englischsprachige Aufführung der British
National Opera Company in Covent Garden
von der BBC gesendet wurde.
Die amerikanische Premiere von Hänsel
und Gretel fand am 8. Oktober 1895 im
New Yorker Daly’s Theatre statt; auch
hier wurde das Werk in englischer Sprache
gesungen. Am 25. November 1905 wurde
es ins Repertoire der Metropolitan Opera
aufgenommen (der Komponist war bei
der ersten Aufführung anwesend) und am
Weihnachtstag 1931 wurde es als erste Oper
live von der Met aus gesendet, wiederum
in englischer Sprache. Zu den überaus
erfolgreichen Inszenierungen der jüngeren
Zeit zählen die Fassung von David Pountney
an der English National Opera, die am 16.
Dezember 1987 am Londoner Coliseum
Premiere feierte und zunächst von Mark
Elder dirigiert wurde, sowie die Inszenierung
von Richard Jones an der Welsh National
Opera, die zuerst von Vladimir Jurowski
dirigiert wurde und am 10. Dezember 1998
am New Theatre in Cardiff auf die Bühne
kam.
© 2007 George Hall
33
30/4/07 10:02:50
Hexe, die Kinder in ihre Hütte lockt, um sie
zu Lebkuchen zu verwandeln, indem sie sie
bei lebendigem Leibe bäckt! Die Eltern eilen
hinaus, um die Kinder zu suchen.
Handlung
COMPACT DISC ONE
Ouvertüre
Erster Akt
Im Haus des Besenmachers
Die Geschwister sind allein zu Hause; Hänsel
fertigt für seinen Vater Besen an, während seine
Schwester Gretel Socken strickt. 2 – 4 Gretel
lenkt ihren Bruder mit einem Lied ab, Hänsel
stimmt mit ein und schon bald singen und
tanzen die beiden, anstatt zu arbeiten. 5 – 6
Als ihre Mutter Gertrud heimkommt, regt sie
sich darüber auf, wie wenig die Kinder geschafft
haben, und kippt aus Versehen den Milchkrug
um. Wütend trägt sie den Kindern auf, in
den Wald zu gehen und wilde Erdbeeren zu
sammeln, dann setzt sie sich hin und schläft vor
Erschöpfung ein.
1
Zweiter Akt
Im Wald
10
Vorspiel. 11 – 12 Im Wald bindet Gretel
einen Blumenkranz, während Hänsel die
wilden Erdbeeren sammelt und gleich aufißt.
Als alle Beeren aufgegessen sind, suchen die
Kinder weiter, aber es ist dunkel geworden
13
und sie merken, daß sie sich verlaufen haben.
Ein dichter Nebel kommt auf und die Kinder
ängstigen sich, 14 doch der Nebel klart auf
und ein kleiner Sandmann taucht auf, der den
Kindern Schlafsand in die Augen streut.
15
Nachdem sie ihr Nachtgebet gesprochen
haben, schlafen sie beide ein. Der Nebel
umhüllt sie wieder und wird zu einer
Wolkentreppe, auf der vierzehn Engel
herabsteigen, um die Nacht hindurch über die
Kinder zu wachen. 16 Pantomime.
7
Der Vater der Kinder, Peter, kehrt in
Hochstimmung nach Hause zurück. Er hat alle
seine Besen verkaufen können und hat etwas zu
Essen mitgebracht. Die Eltern tanzen fröhlich
durchs Zimmer. 8 – 9 Als Peter erfährt, daß
die Kinder nicht zu Hause sind, sondern in
den Wald geschickt wurden, um Erdbeeren
zu pflücken, ist er entsetzt: Im Wald lebt die
COMPACT DISC TWO
Dritter Akt
Das Lebkuchenhaus
1
Einleitung. 2 –
34
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 34-35
3
Als die Dämmerung
anbricht, kommt die Tau-Fee, um die Kinder zu
wecken, indem sie Tautropfen über sie schüttelt.
4
Sie spielen, und als der Nebel sich verzieht,
entdecken sie ein kleines Lebkuchenhaus,
das von einem Zaun aus Lebkuchenfiguren
umschlossen ist. 5 – 6 Während sie an dem
Lebkuchen knabbern, schleicht sich die Hexe
von hinten heran und wirft ein Seil um Hänsels
Hals. 7 – 9 Er versucht sich loszureißen,
doch die Hexe spricht einen Zauberspruch
über die Kinder. Sie schließt Hänsel im Stall
ein und schickt Gretel nach drinnen, um den
Tisch zu decken. 10 Doch Gretel hat sich den
Zauberspruch der Hexe gemerkt und benutzt
ihn nun, um ihren Bruder zu befreien.
Die Hexe trägt Gretel auf, den Ofen zu
prüfen, doch Gretel gibt vor, zu dumm zu
sein, und bittet die Hexe, ihr zu zeigen, was
sie tun soll. Schnell schieben die Kinder sie in
den Ofen und werfen die Türe zu. 11 – 12 Der
Ofen explodiert und die Lebkuchenfiguren
auf dem Zaun verwandeln sich in die Kinder
zurück, die sie einst waren, bevor sie im Ofen
gebacken wurden. 13 Hänsel und Gretels Eltern
erscheinen und unter allgemeiner Heiterkeit
entdecken sie, daß die Hexe nun selbst in einen
Lebkuchen verwandelt worden ist.
Jennifer Larmore (Hänsel) wurde in
Atlanta (Georgia) geboren und studierte am
Westminster Choir College in Princeton (New
Jersey); danach nahm sie Privatunterricht
bei John Bullock und Regina Resnik. Sie
ist berühmt für ihre Koloraturrollen des
Barockrepertoires und für ihren bel canto.
Eine ihrer Standardrollen ist die der Rosina
(Der Barbier von Sevilla), die sie bisher an der
Metropolitan Opera, der Staatsoper Berlin, in
Bonn, Paris, San Francisco und Buenos Aires
gegeben hat.
Weitere Rollen umfassen die Giovanna
Seymour (Anna Bolena) in Nizza; Mélisande
(Pelléas et Mélisande) in Marseilles; Isolier (Le
Comte Ory) an der Mailänder Scala; Dorabella
(Così fan tutte) auf dem Salzburger Festival;
Romeo (I Capuleti e i Montecchi) an der New
Yorker Carnegie Hall sowie an der Opéra de
Paris-Bastille und in Genf; The Italian Girl
in Algiers an der Deutschen Oper Berlin, in
Paris und in Wien; Ruggiero (Alcina) an der
Chicago Lyric Opera; Sesto (La clemenza di
Tito) am Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona;
die Titelrolle in Carmen an der Washington
Opera; Giulio Cesare an der Metropolitan
Opera und in Madrid; die Titelrolle in Orfeo
in Madrid; Orlovsky (Die Fledermaus) in
Japan und an der Metropolitan Opera; Hänsel
Übersetzung: Stephanie Wollny
35
30/4/07 10:02:51
und Johanna (Sweeney Todd ) gesungen. Sie
ist regelmäßig an der Bayerischen Staatsoper
in München zu Gast, wo ihre bisherigen
Rollen die Nannetta unter dem Dirigat von
Zubin Mehta, Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier),
Zdenka (Arabella), Servilia (La clemenza di
Tito), Ilia (Idomeneo) und Susanna (Le nozze
di Figaro) umfaßten. Ferner hat sie die Ilia an
der Niederländischen Oper und der Opéra
de Lausanne gegeben, die Titelrolle in The
Cunning Little Vixen an der Scottish Opera,
Pamina, Susanna, Ilia, Marzelline (Fidelio),
Norina (Don Pasquale) und Hero (Beatrice and
Benedict) an der Welsh National Opera sowie
Romilda (Xerxes) und Ginevra (Ariodante) an
der English National Opera.
Auch in den USA hat Rebecca Evans große
Erfolge gefeiert, so in den Rollen der Susanna
und Zerlina an der Metropolitan Opera in
New York, als Susanna an der Santa Fe Opera,
als Pamina und Adèle (Die Fledermaus) an der
Lyric Opera of Chicago sowie als Zerlina, Anne
Trulove (The Rake’s Progress)und Adina (L’elisir
d’amore) an der San Francisco Opera.
Zu ihren Konzertaufführungen zählen
Auftritte bei den BBC Proms und auf dem
Edinburgh International Festival, Galakonzerte
mit Andrea Bocelli und mit Luciano
Pavarotti sowie Auftritte auf dem Melbourne
(Hänsel und Gretel) an der Metropolitan Opera
und auf den BBC Proms; Giulietta (Hoffmanns
Erzählungen) am Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, und die Titelrolle in La Cenerentola an
der Metropolitan Opera.
Jennifer Larmore hat bisher mehr als siebzig
Tonträgeraufnahmen gemacht; ihr gebührt
daher die Auszeichnung, die meisteingespielte
Mezzosopranistin aller Zeiten zu sein. Ihre
Diskographie umfaßt unter anderem eine CD
mit Großen Opernarien für die ChandosReihe “Opera in English”, ferner Lucia di
Lammermoor, Julius Caesar, Orfeo, Der Barbier
von Sevilla und La Cenerentola sowie für
Opera Rara L’incoronazione di Poppea, Bianca e
Falliero, Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra, Francesca
di Foix und Adelaide di Borgogna. Im Jahre
2002 wurde Jennifer Larmore in Anerkennung
ihres Beitrags zur Welt der Musik zum
Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres ernannt.
Rebecca Evans (Gretel) wurde in Südwales
geboren und an der Guildhall School of Music
and Drama ausgebildet. Mit finanzieller
Unterstützung der Peter Moores Foundation
studierte sie zudem bei Ronald Schneider
in Berlin. Am Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, hat sie die Pamina (Die Zauberflöte),
Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Nannetta (Falstaff )
36
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 36-37
International Festival. Recitals hat sie in
der Londoner Wigmore Hall sowie auf den
Festivals von Barcelona, Ravinia, Buxton,
Belfast und Beaulieu-sur-Mer gegeben.
Ihre Einspielungen umfassen die
Marzellina (Fidelio), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte)
und Ilia (Idomeneo) für die Chandos-Reihe
“Opera in English”, die Nannetta (Falstaff )
unter Sir John Eliot Gardiner, eine Reihe von
Aufnahmen mit Werken von Gilbert und
Sullivan unter Sir Charles Mackerras sowie
eine Soloaufnahme mit italienischen Liedern.
Schließlich hat sie noch die Rolle der Belinda
in dem ebenfalls bei Chandos erschienenen
Film Dido und Aeneas gesungen, außerdem
moderierte sie ihre eigene BBC Fernsehserie,
“A Touch of Classics”, mit dem BBC National
Orchestra of Wales.
La Fenice, in Barcelona, Buenos Aires und
Santiago mitgewirkt.
Nach Covent Garden ist Rosalind Plowright
für Sweeney Todd zurückgekehrt, und ihr
Debüt am Maggio Musicale in Florenz feierte
sie mit zwei Opern von Luigi Dallapiccola.
Zu ihren Einspielungen zählen Queen
Elizabeth I (Mary Stuart), Desdemona (Otello)
und Amneris (Aida) für die Chandos-Reihe
“Opera in English”, ferner La forza del destino
zusammen mit José Carreras, Il trovatore mit
Placido Domingo, Mendelssohns Elias (für
Chandos), La Vestale, Hoffmanns Erzählungen
und Mahlers Zweite Sinfonie.
Robert Hayward (der Vater) studierte an der
Guildhall School of Music and Drama sowie
am National Opera Studio und feierte sein
professionelles Operndebüt mit der Titelrolle
in Don Giovanni in einer Produktion der
Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Auftritte haben
ihn mit dem Royal Opera House, der English
National Opera, der Welsh National Opera,
der Opera North, der Scottish Opera, der
Glyndebourne Festival und Touring Opera,
der Bayerischen Staatsoper in München, der
Houston Grand Opera, der Neuen Israelischen
Oper und der Minnesota Opera verbunden,
wobei sein ausgedehntes Repertoire Wotan und
Rosalind Plowright (die Mutter) ist in
fast jedem größeren Opernhaus der Welt
aufgetreten; sie hat in Neuinszenierungen
in Covent Garden, an der English National
Opera, in Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt,
München und Berlin, an der Wiener
Staatsoper, in Athen, an der Metropolitan
Opera, in San Francisco, Dallas, Houston
und San Diego, an der Carnegie Hall, an der
Mailänder Scala, in Verona und Florenz, an
37
30/4/07 10:02:53
den Wanderer im Ring, Amfortas (Parsifal),
Jokanaan (Salome), Figaro und Graf Almaviva
(Le nozze di Figaro), die Titelrollen in Der
fliegende Holländer, Mazeppa, Saul, Eugen
Onegin und Don Giovanni, Iago (Otello),
Ford (Falstaff ), Scarpia (Tosca), Marcello (La
bohème), Escamillo (Carmen), Nick Shadow
(The Rake’s Progress), Golaud (Pelléas et
Mélisande) und Wotan/Wanderer im RingZyklus der English National Opera umfaßt.
Konzertengagements hatte er mit
Belshazzar’s Feast, Tippetts The Mask of Time,
Mendelssohns Elias, Beethovens Neunter
Sinfonie und Haydns Schöpfung, The Dream
of Gerontius, Mozarts Requiem sowie Mahlers
Das klagende Lied und Lieder eines fahrenden
Gesellen. Zu seinen Einspielungen zählt die
Rolle des Dr. Schön (Lulu) im Rahmen der
Chandos-Reihe “Opera in English” sowie
ebenfalls für Chandos The Pilgrim’s Progress.
an der Los Angeles Opera und der Pariser
Opéra, Klytemnestra (Elektra) an der San
Francisco Opera, die Principessa (Suor
Angelica) mit dem Royal Concertgebouw
Orchestra unter Chailly, Dialogues des
Carmélites in Amsterdam, die Kostelnička
( Jenůfa) unter Ozawa in Japan und die
Kabanicka (Katya Kabanova) auf dem
Salzburger Festival.
An der Royal Opera, Covent Garden, hat
sie Fricka und Waltraute sowie Ulrica (Un
ballo in maschera), Klytemnestra und Mrs
Grose (The Turn of the Screw) gesungen,
an der Mailänder Scala, Herodias (Salome)
und Cassandre (Les Troyens). Zu ihren
Rollen an der Bayerischen Staatsoper in
München zählen Herodias, Klytemnestra,
Ulrica, Mistress Quickly (Falstaff ) und
Ortrud (Lohengrin), zu denen an der Wiener
Staatsoper Klytemnestra, Fricka und Mistress
Quickly. Ihre berühmteste Rolle ist die
der Amme in Die Frau ohne Schatten, die
sie in Amsterdam, London, Los Angeles,
München, Paris, Wien und Berlin sowie an
der Metropolitan Opera gegeben hat.
Jane Henschels Einspielungen umfassen
Krasas Verlobung im Traum, The Rake’s
Progress, Albéniz’ Merlin, Brittens The Turn
of the Screw und Mahlers Achte Sinfonie.
Jane Henschel (die Hexe) wurde im
amerikanischen Bundesstaat Wisconsin
geboren, studierte an der University of
California und zog anschließend nach
Deutschland. Zu ihren Rollen zählen Baba
der Türke (The Rake’s Progress) auf den
Festivals von Glyndebourne, Saito Kinen
und Salzburg, Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde)
38
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 38-39
Sarah Tynan (Die Tau-Fee) wurde in London
geboren und studierte am Royal Northern
College of Music und an der Royal Academy
of Music (bei Penelope Mackay). An der
Royal Academy wurde ihr die Auszeichnung
“Queen’s Commendation for Excellence”
zuteil.
Seit sie zum Ensemble der English National
Opera gehört, hat sie die Tytania
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Papagena
(Die Zauberflöte), Iphis ( Jephtha), Atalanta
(Xerxes), Yum-Yum (Der Mikado) und
Schwester Constance (The Carmelites)
gegeben. Weitere Opernengagements
umfassen die Tytania an La Monnaie in
Brüssel, Bella (The Midsummer Marriage)
unter der Leitung von Richard Hickox auf
dem St. Endellion Festival, Pretty Polly
in Birtwistles Punch and Judy am Teatro
Nacional San João in Porto, die Gouvernante
in Brittens The Turn of the Screw für eine
Rußland-Tournee des British Council, Elsie
Maynard (The Yeomen of the Guard) und
Gianetta (The Gondoliers) an der Phoenix
Opera.
Für die Chandos-Reihe “Opera in English”
hat Sarah Tynan die Rollen der Schwester
Constance (The Carmelites) und der Barbarina
(The Marriage of Figaro) aufgenommen.
Diana Montague (der Sandman) wurde in
Winchester geboren und studierte am Royal
Northern College of Music. Seit ihrem Debüt
als Zerlina mit der Glyndebourne Touring
Opera ist sie am Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, an der Metropolitan Opera in New
York, dem Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brüssel,
der Opéra national de Paris-Bastille, dem
Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires sowie auf dem
Bayreuther und dem Salzburger Festival
aufgetreten.
Ihr Repertoire umfaßt die großen
Mezzosopran-Rollen in den Opern von
Mozart, Gluck, Strauss, Rossini, Bellini und
Berlioz; zu ihren bisherigen Engagements
zählen Benvenuto Cellini an der Oper von
Rom; Iphigénie en Tauride in Buenos Aires,
Madrid und an der Welsh National Opera;
Albert Herring, Cherubino (Le nozze di
Figaro) und Andromaca in Rossinis Ermione
in Glyndebourne; Le Comte Ory in Lausanne,
Rom und Glyndebourne; Proserpina in
Monteverdis Orfeo in Amsterdam; Ariadne
auf Naxos in Lissabon; Marguerite (La
Damnation de Faust) in Wien und Genf;
Minerva (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria) in
Amsterdam and Sydney; Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg am Royal Opera House in
Covent Garden, Junon in Rameaus Platée
39
30/4/07 10:02:54
mit der Royal Opera auf dem Edinburgh
Festival und in London, sowie Octavian
(Der Rosenkavalier) an der English National
Opera, in Bilbao und am Teatro Real in
Madrid.
Zu Diana Montagues zahlreichen
Einspielungen zählen Monteverdis Orfeo,
I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Norma, Iphigénie
en Tauride; für Opera Rara Rosmonda
d’Inghilterra, Zoraida di Granata und
Il crociato in Egitto sowie im Rahmen
der Chandos-Reihe “Opera in English”
Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro), Idamante
(Idomeneo), Cavalleria rusticana, Octavian
in Der Rosenkavalier (Highlights) und Faust
sowie schließlich zwei Recital-CDs mit
Großen Opernarien.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in der Royal
Albert Hall, Mahlers Dritte Sinfonie mit
dem London Symphony Orchestra im
Barbican, Carmina Burana mit dem Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra in der Royal Festival
Hall sowie mit dem Bach Choir ebenfalls in
der Royal Festival Hall und schließlich drei
Blue Peter Proms.
Zu der umfassenden Diskographie des New
London Children’s Choir zählen Turandot
und Carmen im Rahmen der bei Chandos
erschienenen Reihe “Opera in English”,
Tchaikowskis Nußknacker, Schostakovichs
Das Lied von den Wäldern, Prokofiews Ivan
der Schreckliche und Brittens St Nicolas.
Das Philharmonia Orchestra, eines der
großen Orchester der Welt, steht nun
bereits im zehnten Jahr unter der Leitung
seines berühmten deutschen Chefdirigenten
Christoph von Dohnányi. Er setzt eine
Tradition fort, die mit Otto Klemperer
begann und über Lorin Maazel (Erster
Gastdirigent), Riccardo Muti (Chefdirigent
und Musikalischer Leiter), Giuseppe Sinopoli
(Musikalischer Leiter) bis zu Kurt Sanderling
(Emeritierter Dirigent), Vladimir Ashkenazy
(Ehrendirigent) und Sir Charles Mackerras
(Hauptgastdirigent) führt, aber auch die
Der New London Children’s Choir wurde
1991 von seinem Musikdirektor Ronald Corp
gegründet mit dem Ziel, Kinder mit den
Freuden und Anforderungen des Singens und
Musizierens aller Arten von Musik vertraut zu
machen. Der Chor hat inzwischen Dutzende
von Einspielungen und Sendungen gemacht
und war auf zahlreichen großen Festivals zu
Gast.
Zu den Konzert-Highlights des Chors
zählen Mahlers Achte Sinfonie mit dem
40
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 40-41
Zusammenarbeit mit Wilhelm Furtwängler,
Richard Strauss, Arturo Toscanini, Guido
Cantelli, Herbert von Karajan und Carlo
Maria Giulini einbezog. Das Orchester
verpflichtet weiterhin Gastdirigenten und
Solisten von Weltrang, während einige der
größten europäischen Nachwuchstalente in
seine Reihen aufgenommen werden.
Das Philharmonia Orchestra ist in der
Royal Festival Hall ansässig und nimmt
eine zentrale Position im Musikleben
Großbritanniens ein, nicht nur durch seine
Londoner Konzerte, sondern auch durch feste
Kontakte mit Aufführungsstätten in anderen
Teilen des Landes, die eine ideale Gelegenheit
für die Erweiterung seines dynamischen und
bevölkerungsnahen musikpädagogischen
Programms bieten. Das Orchester ist mit
zahlreichen Preisen ausgezeichnet worden
und hat beispiellose kritische Unterstützung
für seine innovative Programmpolitik
gewonnen, die in ihrem Kern der Bestellung
und Darbietung neuer Musik von führenden
Komponisten unserer Zeit verpflichtet ist.
Die Konzerte des Orchesters werden immer
häufiger von BBC Radio 3 übertragen, nicht
zuletzt im Rahmen der jährlichen BBC Proms.
Mit über 1000 Schallplattenaufnahmen
verfügt das Philharmonia Orchestra über die
größte Orchesterdiskographie der Welt, die
auch Fernseh- und Filmmusik beinhaltet,
und genießt weltweit höchstes Ansehen. Das
Orchester hat für Opera Rara mehrere Recitals
sowie dreizehn komplette Opern eingespielt
und in der Reihe “Opera in English” für
Chandos mit Unterstützung durch die Peter
Moores Foundation The Marriage of Figaro,
The Thieving Magpie, Wozzeck, Don Giovanni,
The Elixir of Love, Lucia of Lammermoor,
Faust, Carmen, Aida, La Bohème, Madam
Butterfly, Turandot, die preisgekrönte Tosca und
Opernarien in Solorecitals mit Bruce Ford,
Diana Montague, Dennis O’Neill, Alastair
Miles, Yvonne Kenny und John Tomlinson
aufgenommen. Das Philharmonia Orchestra
untermauert seinen internationalen Rang
durch regelmäßige Tourneen und Gastauftritte
an berühmten Häusern wie dem Châtelet
Théâtre Musical in Paris, dem Megaron
in Athen und dem Lincoln Center for the
Performing Arts in New York.
Sir Charles Mackerras studierte am
Konservatorium in Sydney und kam 1947
nach England. Von der Kulturorganisation
British Council erhielt er ein Stipendium
zur Erweiterung seines Studiums an der
Musikakademie Prag. In jenem Jahr begann
41
30/4/07 10:02:56
seine Leidenschaft für die Musik Janáčeks,
als er Katja Kabanowa unter der Leitung des
großen Václav Talich hörte.
Als Assistant Conductor am Londoner
Opernhaus Sadler’s Wells dirigierte er 1951
die erste Aufführung von Katja Kabanowa
in der englischsprachigen Welt und brachte
später auch Die Sache Makropulos und
Aus einem Totenhaus nach Sadler’s Wells.
Hocherfolgreiche Inszenierungen von Janáčeks
Opern sowie vertrautere Werke aus dem
Standardrepertoire leitete er auch während
seiner Zeit als Musikdirektor der English
National Opera (1970 –77) und der Welsh
National Opera (1987–1992). In ganz Europa,
den USA und Australien gilt er als Wegbereiter
der Musik Janáčeks. Jenůfa ist ihm besonders
ans Herz gewachsen.
Name verbindet sich seit langem mit
der Tschechischen Philharmonie, mit der
er die meisten Orchesterwerke Janáčeks,
Katja Kabanowa und Dvořáks Rusalka
aufgenommen hat. Seine umfangreiche
Diskographie enthält einen preisgekrönten
Zyklus von Janáček-Opern mit den Wiener
Philharmonikern aus den frühen achtziger
Jahren. Für Chandos hat er Janáčeks
Glagolitische Messe in der Originalfassung,
Kodálys Psalmus Hungaricus und Dvořáks
Cellokonzert eingespielt. Für die ChandosSerie “Opera in English” hat er Osud, La
traviata, Werther, Julius Caesar, Mary Stuart,
Eugene Onegin, Jenůfa, The Magic Flute, The
Bartered Bride und The Makropulos Case
aufgenommen.
Sir Charles hat auch die Musik des
18. Jahrhunderts erforscht, insbesondere
Händel und Mozart. Er hat eine Reihe von
Mozart-Opern und Gilbert-und-SullivanOperetten sowie Gesamtaufnahmen der
Sinfonien von Mozart, Beethoven und
Brahms, mehrere Oratorien von Händel
sowie Sinfonien von Mahler und Elgar
vorgelegt. Derzeit ist er Hauptgastdirigent des
Philharmonia Orchestra, Conductor Laureate
des Scottish Chamber Orchestra sowie
Conductor Emeritus der Welsh National
Opera und der San Francisco Opera.
Sir Charles wurde 1974 mit dem
britischen Verdienstorden CBE
ausgezeichnet, 1979 zum Ritter geschlagen,
1996 mit der Ehrenmedaille der
Tschechischen Republik gewürdigt und 1997
zum Companion of the Order of Australia
ernannt. 2003 erhob ihn Königin Elizabeth
II. zum Companion of Honour.
On session: Jane Henschel
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 42-43
30/4/07 10:02:57
Hänsel, Gretel et Humperdinck
On demande parfois si Hänsel und Gretel
est vraiment un opéra destiné aux enfants
ou aux adultes. La réponse, bien entendu,
est qu’il s’adresse aux deux. Les enfants
aimeront la simplicité des chansons et des
jeux chantés, le comique grotesque de la
sorcière déchaînée aux habitudes alimentaires
monstrueuses, et les apparitions surnaturelles
culminant dans la séquence de la
Pantomime de rêve qui, dans les productions
traditionnelles, met en scène quatorze anges
descendant un escalier pour venir veiller
sur le sommeil des enfants dans la forêt
nocturne. Mais l’enfant qui est en nous tous
aimera également ces éléments. En outre,
les adultes apprécieront probablement la
riche orchestration et les subtiles harmonies
de Humperdinck, la force constante de son
invention mélodique et de son contrepoint
magistral, ainsi que son extraordinaire
variété d’humeurs et de textures, allant d’une
complexité quasi wagnérienne jusqu’à une
exubérance et un élan dansant à la Johann
Strauss. Mais les enfants – même s’ils n’ont
jamais entendu du Wagner ou du contrepoint
– enregistreront au moins inconsciemment
ces aspects avec plaisir eux aussi. Hänsel und
Gretel est un opéra pour tous.
Une question à laquelle il est plus difficile
de répondre est de savoir si ce conte de fées
en particulier, ou les contes de fées en général,
conviennent aux enfants – ou même aux
adultes. L’opéra de Humperdinck possède
de nombreux passages de comédie, plusieurs
moments réconfortants et une fin heureuse
officielle, mais on rencontre également des
aspects inquiétants tout au long de son
déroulement. C’est généralement la règle dans
les contes de fées – en particulier ceux des
Grimm.
Les frères Jacob Ludwig (1785 –1863) et
Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786 –1859) étaient
deux universitaires allemands éminents et,
avant que le terme ne fût inventé, folkloristes.
Ils publièrent d’importants travaux consacrés
à la grammaire, au vocabulaire et à l’usage de
la langue allemande, mais leur ouvrage le plus
célèbre demeure les Kinder- und Hausmärchen,
réunis et édités conjointement en 1812. Ils
ont été souvent réimprimés jusqu’à nous sous
le titre Les Contes de Grimm. Avant eux, seul
un petit nombre de ce que nous connaissons
44
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 44-45
aujourd’hui comme étant des contes de fées
avait été publié quelle que soit la langue,
mais le succès de leur version encouragea la
publication de nombreuses autres collections
à travers toute l’Europe, donnant naissance à
un nouveau genre littéraire très influent. Ils
arrivèrent également au bon moment car les
profonds changements qui allaient bouleverser
la société européenne pendant le dix-neuvième
siècle signifiaient que beaucoup de ces contes
folkloriques transmis oralement allaient, en
une ou deux générations, devenir rares et
finalement disparaître. Les frères Grimm et
leurs successeurs sauvèrent de l’oubli définitif
une grande partie de ces récits.
Hänsel und Gretel parut dans la toute
première édition de leurs contes. C’est une
histoire encore plus cruelle que l’adaptation
réalisée par Adelheid Wette, la sœur de
Humperdinck, et qui allait s’imposer comme
son opéra le plus célèbre. Les parents de Hänsel
et Gretel (la mère deviendra le personnage un
peu moins troublant de la belle-mère à partir
de la deuxième édition) sont si pauvres qu’ils
décident de “perdre” leurs enfants dans la forêt
afin d’avoir assez à manger pour eux-mêmes.
C’est la mère qui suggère cette idée et persuade
son époux réticent à l’exécuter. L’ingéniosité de
Hänsel le sauve ainsi que sa sœur la première
fois (il laisse tomber derrière lui des cailloux
brillants, ce qui leur permet de revenir par le
même chemin), mais la seconde fois il utilise
des miettes de pain que les oiseaux mangent
bien entendu. Complètement perdus, ils
découvrent la chaumière de la sorcière et se
débarrassent d’elle plus ou moins comme dans
l’opéra (mais sans libérer aucun enfant en pain
d’épice); ensuite, ils parviennent à retrouver
le chemin de leur maison où ils découvrent,
sans aucun doute avec soulagement, que leur
mère/belle-mère est morte entre temps.
Il n’est pas nécessaire d’être un disciple
de Freud pour déceler dans cette sombre
petite histoire le lien non exprimé entre la
figure de la mère/belle-mère et celle de la
sorcière, en particulier si l’on songe qu’elles
meurent à peu près au même moment. Ce
rapport psychologique est souligné dans les
représentations de l’opéra quand les deux
rôles sont chantés par la même interprète
– cependant, ce n’était pas l’intention de
Humperdinck et cette idée n’est pas reprise
dans le présent enregistrement. Une autre
tradition, particulièrement commune en
Allemagne, consiste à confier le rôle de la
sorcière à un ténor en travesti. Ce sont là
deux idées intéressantes, mais il est clair
qu’elles s’excluent l’une l’autre. La version de
45
30/4/07 10:03:00
Wette/Humperdinck non seulement permet à
Gertrude de vivre mais également de se réjouir
du retour de ses enfants, ce qui donne à la fin
de l’ouvrage un sentiment chaleureux aussi
profond en son genre que la sombre version
des Grimm, et assure plus sûrement le succès
sur scène.
L’ouvrage de Humperdinck appartient
à une sous-catégorie d’opéra allemand
intitulée Märchenoper, ou dans le cas présent
Märchenspiel (littéralement “pièce de conte
de fées”: comme nous allons le voir, Hänsel
und Gretel n’était pas du tout un opéra à
l’origine). Cette tradition se développa à la
suite du renouveau d’intérêt pour le conte
folklorique (ou conte de fées) provoqué
par les frères Grimm, et parvint à son plein
épanouissement à la fin du dix-neuvième
et au début du vingtième siècle. Plusieurs
compositeurs se spécialisèrent dans ce genre,
notamment Humperdinck, qui s’inspira
également des frères Grimm pour Die sieben
Geislein (Les Sept Jeunes Enfants) en 1895,
mais aussi du collecteur français de contes de
fées du dix-septième siècle Charles Perrault
pour Dornröschen (La Belle au bois dormant)
en 1902, et d’un conte de fées inventé par
Ernst Rosmer (pseudonyme de la dramaturge
Else Bernstein-Porges qui survécut au camp
de concentration de Terezin, et mourut en
1949 à l’âge de quatre-vingt-deux ans) pour
Königskinder (version finale en 1910). L’autre
représentant important fut le fils de Richard
Wagner, Siegfried (1869–1930), qui subit
l’influence de Humperdinck. Plusieurs de
ses dix-huit opéras sont des Märchenopern,
un genre qu’il explora non pas pour sa
fantaisie d’évasion mais comme un moyen
de faire face à des difficultés morales et
émotionnelles. Les récentes reprises de pièces
telles que Schwarzschwanenreich (Le Royaume
du cygne noir, 1910) et Der Friedensengel
(L’Ange de la paix, 1914) montrent qu’il eut
parfois un style personnel et digne d’intérêt,
mais malheureusement noyé par le bruit
phénoménal créé par son père au génie bien
supérieur.
À l’origine, Adelheid Wette demanda à son
frère d’écrire seulement des chansons pour
une pièce s’inspirant de Hänsel und Gretel
(certains des passages les plus simples de
l’opéra, incluant ceux qui utilisent de véritables
chansons folkloriques, reflètent ces débuts). Par
la suite, la pièce devint un Singspiel, ou opéra
avec dialogues. Finalement, il fut transformé en
un opéra au développement continu, incluant
plusieurs sections orchestrales importantes. Le
miracle est que le résultat est aussi cohérent.
46
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 46-47
Les transitions de Humperdinck sont si habiles
qu’il est impossible de déceler les jointures.
C’est un exemple illustrant parfaitement
l’affirmation de son mentor Wagner pour qui
l’art de la composition est l’art de la transition.
Fait intéressant, le deuxième opéra de
Humperdinck le plus connu, Königskinder
(Enfants royaux), eut une semblable genèse
puisqu’il fut conçu au départ comme musique
de scène pour une pièce en 1894. Elle fut
ensuite transformée (en 1897) en mélodrame
(c’est-à-dire des paroles sur de la musique),
utilisant la technique du Sprechgesang – reprise
plus tard par Schoenberg et Berg, dans laquelle
les paroles sont notées d’une manière exacte du
point de vue rythmique, mais beaucoup moins
précise quant aux hauteurs sonores – avant de
parvenir à sa forme définitive d’opéra complet
en 1910. Königskinder n’est pas souvent
représenté, mais quand c’est le cas, la partition
se montre riche et fascinante. La raison de son
manque de succès est très probablement due à
son caractère beaucoup plus sombre que celui
de Hänsel und Gretel. Les “enfants royaux”
de son titre – leur noblesse symbolique n’est
pas héritée dans le cas de l’un des deux, mais
est innée d’une manière assez mystérieuse
– meurent à la fin. Après tout, le public préfère
peut-être les fins heureuses. Au regard de la
qualité de ces deux ouvrages, il est probable
que notre méconnaissance du reste de la
production de Humperdinck est une perte
pour nous. À l’instar d’autres “compositeurs
d’un opéra” tels que Mascagni et Leoncavallo,
Humperdinck fut victime de son premier
succès. Tout le monde voulait simplement un
autre Hänsel und Gretel. Ceci est également
compréhensible. Richard Strauss qualifia la
partition de chef-d’œuvre aussitôt après l’avoir
lue; et il savait reconnaître une bonne chose
quand il en voyait une.
Cependant, Humperdinck connut une
carrière longue et distinguée de compositeur
et de professeur. Un bref résumé semble
approprié. Engelbert Humperdinck naquit
à Siegburg près de Cologne en 1854 et
commença l’étude du piano à l’âge de sept ans;
après avoir vu pour la première fois un opéra
à l’âge de quatorze ans, il se mit à composer
ses propres ouvrages. Bien que son père se soit
opposé à ses ambitions musicales, il l’autorisa
à entrer au Conservatoire de Cologne à l’âge
de dix-huit ans. Il y étudia consciencieusement
plusieurs années avec des maîtres mineurs tels
que Hiller, Rheinberger, Lachner, et remporta
plusieurs prix. Beaucoup plus importante fut sa
rencontre avec Wagner en 1880, suivie d’une
invitation à venir à Bayreuth où Humperdinck
47
30/4/07 10:03:01
devint l’assistant musical de Wagner pendant
la préparation des premières représentations de
Parsifal en 1882.
Sa carrière compta des périodes où il fut
professeur et critique musical, mais sa fortune
changea avec le succès de son opéra de conte
de fées, Hänsel und Gretel, qui fut donné sur
scène juste avant Noël en 1893. Son accueil fut
spectaculaire – en l’espace d’un an, au moins
soixante-douze théâtres lyriques le reprirent –
et il devint un ouvrage permanent du
répertoire lyrique.
Par la suite, Humperdinck continua à
composer des opéras, le plus souvent dans le
style comique ou dans la tradition du conte
de fées dont Hänsel und Gretel reste l’exemple
le plus significatif. En 1910, le Metropolitan
Opera de New York donna la première de
Königskinder – un fait qui en soi démontre
son immense réputation internationale à
cette époque. Son œuvre majeure suivante
le conduisit à Londres, et fut composée à
la demande du grand metteur en scène de
théâtre Max Reinhardt. S’inspirant d’une
légende médiévale transformée en drame par
Karl Vollmöller, le spectaculaire The Miracle,
créé dans la salle d’exposition à Olympia en
1911, et pour lequel Humperdinck réalisa
une partition d’accompagnement, raconte
l’histoire d’une religieuse qui abandonne son
ordre pour faire l’expérience de la vie; mais
quand elle revient pénitente, elle découvre
que personne n’a regretté son absence car
sa place a été prise par la Vierge Marie. La
production de Reinhardt, qui nécessitait
des milliers d’interprètes chaque soir, fut
reprise à New York en 1924 et fut filmée
deux fois. Les autres œuvres du compositeur
comptent des musiques de scène pour le
théâtre (en particulier pour une série de
pièces de Shakespeare de nouveau écrites pour
Reinhardt), des pages chorales, des chansons
et des pièces de musique de chambre.
Humperdinck mourut à Neustrelitz près de
Berlin en 1921.
C’est Richard Strauss – un grand chef
d’orchestre d’opéra ainsi qu’un grand
compositeur d’opéra – qui dirigea la création
de Hänsel und Gretel au Théâtre de la Cour
de Weimar le 24 décembre 1893. Le 26
décembre 1894, l’ouvrage fut donné pour la
première fois en Grande-Bretagne, en anglais,
au Daly’s Theatre de Londres. Il resta à
l’affiche jusqu’à l’année suivante où il parvint
à sa centième représentation au mois d’avril.
Quand le Daly’s Theatre fut sollicité pour un
autre spectacle, Hänsel und Gretel passa au
Gaity Theatre où il fut donné en matinée avec
48
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 48-49
Bastien und Bastienne de Mozart. Plus tard,
il fut transféré au Princess’s Theatre puis au
Savoy Theatre. Le public de Covent Garden
l’entendit pour la première fois en 1896, de
nouveau chanté en anglais. En 1923, il devint
le premier opéra à être radiodiffusé en Europe
quand la représentation donnée en anglais
par la British National Opera Company fut
retransmise par la BBC.
Hänsel und Gretel fut créé (de nouveau en
anglais) aux États-Unis au Daly’s Theater
de New York le 9 octobre 1895. Il entra
au répertoire du Metropolitan Opera le 25
novembre 1905 (le compositeur assista à la
première représentation), et le jour de Noël
1931, il fut le premier opéra à être radiodiffusé
en direct du Metropolitan Opera, toujours
en anglais. Les récentes productions très
acclamées au Royaume-Uni incluent celle
de David Pountney à l’English National
Opera, dont la première eu lieu au Coliseum
de Londres le 16 décembre 1987 sous la
direction de Mark Elder, et celle mise en
scène par Richard Jones au Welsh National
Opera, dirigée par Vladimir Jurowski, dont
la première eut lieu le 10 décembre au New
Theatre de Cardiff.
Argument
COMPACT DISC ONE
Ouverture
Acte I
Dans la maison du fabricant de balais
Laissés seuls à la maison, Hänsel fabrique
des balais pour son père tandis que sa sœur
Gretel tricote des bas. 2 – 4 Gretel distrait
son frère en chantant une chanson; Hänsel se
joint à elle, et bientôt ils chantent et dansent
ensemble. 5 – 6 Quand leur mère Gertrude
revient, elle se met en colère à cause du peu
de travail réalisé par les enfants et renverse
par accident une cruche de lait. Furieuse,
elle envoie les enfants dans la forêt pour aller
cueillir des fraises sauvages, puis elle s’assoit et
s’endort, épuisée.
1
Le père des enfants, Peter, rentre de très
bonne humeur car il a vendu tous ses balais et
rapporte de la nourriture. Les parents dansent
joyeusement autour de la pièce. 8 – 9 Peter
est horrifié quand il apprend que les enfants
sont sortis pour aller chercher des fraises dans
la forêt: car c’est le domaine de la sorcière
qui attire les enfants dans sa chaumière pour
les cuire vivants et les transformer en pains
7
© 2007 George Hall
49
30/4/07 10:03:02
chaumière en pain d’épice entourée
d’une clôture faite de figures en pain d’épice.
5 – 6
Pendant qu’ils mangent des morceaux
de pain d’épice, la sorcière s’approche d’eux
sans bruit et lance une corde autour du cou de
Hänsel. 7 – 9 Il tente de s’en dégager, mais la
sorcière lui jette un sort ainsi qu’à sa sœur. Elle
enferme Hänsel dans l’écurie et envoie Gretel à
l’intérieur de la chaumière pour dresser la table.
10
Mais Gretel se rappelle la formule magique
de la sorcière, et l’utilise pour délivrer Hänsel.
d’épice! Ils se précipitent dehors à la recherche
de Hänsel et Gretel.
Acte II
Dans la forêt
10
Prélude. 11 – 12 Dans la forêt Gretel tresse
une guirlande de fleurs tandis que Hänsel
cueille des fraises sauvages et les mange. Quand
toutes les fraises ont été mangées, les enfants
se mettent à en chercher d’autres, mais la nuit
tombe 13 et ils comprennent qu’ils se sont
perdus. Une brume épaisse se lève et ils sont
effrayés. 14 Cependant, la brume s’atténue et
laisse apparaître un petit marchand de sable qui
verse de la poussière de sommeil sur les yeux
des enfants. 15 Après avoir dit leur prière, ils
s’endorment ensemble. La brume les enveloppe
et se transforme en un escalier de nuages, et
quatorze anges descendent pour protéger les
enfants pendant la nuit. 16 Pantomime.
La sorcière demande à Gretel de vérifier si le
four est allumé, mais Gretel feint la stupidité
et lui demande de lui montrer ce qu’il faut
faire. Les enfants poussent alors la sorcière
dans le four et claquent la porte. 11 – 12 Le
four explose et les figures en pain d’épice de
la clôture redeviennent les enfants qui avaient
été cuits. 13 Les parents de Hänsel et Gretel
arrivent. Au milieu de la joie générale, tous
découvrent que la sorcière a été transformée en
un gâteau en pain d’épice.
COMPACT DISC TWO
Acte III
La chaumière en pain d’épice
1
Introduction. 2 – 3 Au lever du jour, la fée
Rosée réveille les enfants en répandant sur eux
quelques gouttes de rosée. 4 Pendant qu’ils
jouent la brume se lève et ils aperçoivent une
Traduction: Francis Marchal
Née à Atlanta, Jennifer Larmore (Hänsel)
a étudié au Westminster Choir College de
Princeton dans le New Jersey puis en privé avec
50
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 50-51
John Bullock et Regina Resnik. Elle est célèbre
pour ses interprétations des rôles coloratures
du répertoire baroque et bel canto. Elle a été
particulièrement associée au rôle de Rosina
(Il barbiere di Siviglia) qu’elle a interprété
au Metropolitan Opera de New York, au
Staatsoper de Berlin, à Bonn, Paris, San
Francisco et Buenos Aires.
Elle a également incarné les rôles de
Giovanna Seymour (Anna Bolena) à Nice;
Mélisande (Pelléas et Mélisande) à Marseille;
Isolier (Le Comte Ory) à La Scala de Milan;
Dorabella (Così fan tutte) au Festival de
Salzbourg; Romeo (I Capuleti e i Montecchi)
au Carnegie Hall de New York, à l’Opéra de
Paris-Bastille et à Genève; L’Italiana in Algeri
au Deutsche Oper de Berlin, à Paris et à
Vienne; Ruggiero (Alcina) au Chicago Lyric
Opera; Sesto (La clemenza di Tito) au Gran
Teatro del Liceu de Barcelone; le rôle titre
dans Carmen à l’Opéra de Washington; Giulio
Cesare au Metropolitan Opera et à Madrid;
le rôle titre dans Orfeo à Madrid; Orlovsky
(Die Fledermaus) au Japon et au Metropolitan
Opera, Hänsel (Hänsel und Gretel) au
Metropolitan Opera et aux BBC Proms de
Londres; Giulietta (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) au
Royal Opera de Covent Garden, et le rôle titre
dans La Cenerentola au Metropolitan Opera.
Jennifer Larmore a réalisé à ce jour plus
de soixante-dix disques, un fait qui lui
vaut la distinction d’être la mezzo-soprano
la plus enregistrée de tous les temps. Ces
enregistrement incluent un disque de
Great Operatic Arias dans la série “Opera
in English” de Chandos, ainsi que Lucia di
Lammermoor, Julius Caesar, Orfeo, Il barbiere
di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, et pour Opera Rara,
L’incoronazione di Poppea, Bianca e Falliero,
Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra, Francesca di Foix
et Adelaide di Borgogna. En 2002, Jennifer
Larmore a été nommée Chevalier de l’ordre
des arts et des lettres en reconnaissance de sa
contribution au monde de la musique.
Née au Pays de Galles, Rebecca Evans (Gretel)
a fait ses études musicales à la Guildhall School
of Music and Drama de Londres, et a bénéficié
du soutien de la Peter Moores Foundation
afin de parfaire sa formation avec Ronald
Schneider à Berlin. Au Royal Opera de Covent
Garden, elle a chanté les rôles de Pamina (Die
Zauberflöte), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Nannetta
(Falstaff ) et Johanna (Sweeney Todd ). Elle se
produit régulièrement au Bayerische Staatsoper
de Munich où elle a interprété les rôles de
Nannetta sous la direction de Zubin Mehta,
Sophie (Der Rosenkavalier), Zdenka (Arabella),
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30/4/07 10:03:03
Servilia (La clemenza di Tito), Ilia (Idomeneo)
et Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro). Elle a incarné
le rôle d’Ilia à l’Opéra de Hollande et à l’Opéra
de Lausanne; le rôle titre dans Le Petit Renard
rusé au Scottish Opera; Pamina, Susanna, Ilia,
Marzelline (Fidelio), Norina (Don Pasquale) et
Hero (Béatrice et Bénédict) au Welsh National
Opera, Romilda (Xerxes) et Ginevra (Ariodante)
à l’English National Opera.
Elle a également développé une importante
carrière lyrique aux États-Unis où elle a chanté
Susanna et Zerlina au Metropolitan Opera
de New York; Susanna à l’Opéra de Santa Fe;
Pamina et Adèle (Die Fledermaus) au Lyric
Opera de Chicago; Zerlina, Anne Trulove
(The Rake’s Progress) et Adina (L’elisir d’amore)
à l’Opéra de San Francisco.
Rebecca Evans s’est produite en concert
aux BBC Proms de Londres, dans les festivals
internationaux d’Édimbourg et de Melbourne,
et a participé à des concerts de gala avec
Andrea Bocelli et Luciano Pavarotti. En récital,
elle a chanté au Wigmore Hall de Londres,
et dans les festivals de Barcelone, Ravinia,
Buxton, Belfast et Beaulieu-sur-Mer.
Ses enregistrements incluent Marzellina
(Fidelio), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Susanna
(Le nozze di Figaro) et Ilia (Idomeneo) pour la
série “Opera in English” de Chandos, ainsi que
Nannetta (Falstaff ) sous la direction de Sir
John Eliot Gardiner, plusieurs enregistrement
d’opéras de Gilbert et Sullivan sous la direction
de Sir Charles Mackerras, et un disque de
mélodies italiennes. Elle a interprété le rôle
de Belinda dans le film Dido and Aeneas
(également publié par Chandos), et a animé sa
propre série “A Touch of Classics” pour la BBC
Television avec le BBC National Orchestra du
Pays de Galles.
Rosalind Plowright (la Mère) s’est produite
dans presque tous les grands théâtres lyriques
du monde incluant de nouvelles productions
à Covent Garden, à l’English National Opera,
à Paris, Hambourg, Frankfort, Munich,
Berlin, au Staatsoper de Vienne, à Athènes, au
Metropolitan Opera et au Carnegie Hall de
New York, à San Francisco, Dallas, Houston,
San Diego, La Scala de Milan, Vérone,
Florence, La Fenice de Venise, Barcelone,
Buenos Aires et Santiago.
Rosalind Plowright est revenue à Covent
Garden pour Sweeney Todd et a fait ses
débuts au Maggio Musicale de Florence
dans deux opéras de Luigi Dallapiccola. Ses
enregistrements incluent la reine Élisabeth
premier (Maria Stuarda), Desdemona (Otello)
et Amneris (Aida) pour la série “Opera in
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 52-53
English” de Chandos, ainsi que La forza del
destino avec José Carreras, Il trovatore avec
Placido Domingo, Elijah de Mendelssohn
(pour Chandos), La Vestale, Les Contes
d’Hoffmann, et la Deuxième Symphonie de
Mahler.
(Pelléas et Mélisande) et Wotan/le Voyageur
errant dans le cycle du Ring produit à l’English
National Opera de Londres.
En concert, Robert Hayward a chanté
dans Belshazzar’s Feast de Walton, The Mask
of Time de Tippett, Elijah de Mendelssohn,
la Neuvième Symphonie de Beethoven, Die
Schöpfung de Haydn, The Dream of Gerontius
d’Elgar, le Requiem de Mozart, Das klagende
Lied et Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen de
Mahler. Ses enregistrements incluent le rôle
du Docteur Schön (Lulu) dans la série “Opera
in English” de Chandos, et The Pilgrim’s
Progress, de Vaughan Williams, également pour
Chandos.
Robert Hayward (le Père) a étudié à la
Guildhall School of Music and Drama de
Londres et au National Opera Studio. Il a fait
ses débuts professionnels à l’opéra dans le rôle
titre de Don Giovanni avec le Glyndebourne
Touring Opera. Il s’est produit au Royal Opera
de Covent Garden, à l’English National Opera,
au Welsh National Opera, à l’Opera North, au
Scottish Opera, au Festival de Glyndebourne
et avec le Glyndebourne Touring Opera, au
Bayerische Staatsoper de Munich, au Grand
Opéra de Houston, au Nouvel Opéra d’Israël,
au Minnesota Opera dans un vaste répertoire
incluant les rôles de Wotan et du Voyageur
errant dans Der Ring des Nibelungen, Amfortas
(Parsifal), Jokanaan (Salome), Figaro et le
comte Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), les rôles
titre dans Die fliegende Holländer, Mazeppa,
Saul, Eugène Onéguine et Don Giovanni, Iago
(Otello), Ford (Falstaff ), Scarpia (Tosca),
Marcello (La bohème), Escamillo (Carmen),
Nick Shadow (The Rake’s Progress), Golaud
Jane Henschel (la Sorcière) est née dans le
Wisconsin. Après avoir étudié à l’Université
de la Californie du Sud, elle s’est installée en
Allemagne. Elle a chanté les rôles de Baba la
Turque (The Rake’s Progress) aux festivals de
Glyndebourne, Saito Kinen et Salzbourg;
Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde) à l’Opéra de Los
Angeles et à l’Opéra de Paris; Clytemnestre
(Elektra) à l’Opéra de San Francisco; la
Princesse (Suor Angelica) avec l’Orchestre
royal du Concertgebouw sous la direction de
Riccardo Chailly; les Dialogues des Carmélites
à Amsterdam; Kostelnička (Jenůfa) sous
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30/4/07 10:03:04
la direction de Seiji Ozawa au Japon et
Kabanicka (Katya Kabanova) au Festival de
Salzbourg.
Au Royal Opera de Covent Garden, elle a
chanté Fricka et Waltraute, Ulrica (Un ballo
in maschera), Clytemnestre, Mrs. Grose (The
Turn of the Screw); à La Scala de Milan elle a
incarné Hérodiade (Salomé) et Cassandre (Les
Troyens). Ses rôles au Bayerische Staatsoper de
Munich incluent Hérodiade, Clytemnestre,
Ulrica, Mrs. Quickly (Falstaff ) et Ortrud
(Lohengrin); au Deutsche Oper de Berlin,
Clytemnestre, Hérodiade et Ortrud; au
Staatsoper de Vienne, Clytemnestre, Fricka et
Mrs. Quickly. Son rôle signature est celui de
la Nourrice (Die Frau ohne Schatten) qu’elle
a interprété à Amsterdam, Londres, Los
Angeles, Munich, Paris, Vienne, Berlin et au
Metropolitan Opera de New York.
Les enregistrements de Jane Henschel
incluent Verlobung im Traum de Hans Krása,
The Rake’s Progress, Merlin d’Albéniz, The
Turn of the Screw de Britten, et la Huitième
Symphonie de Mahler.
elle a obtenu le “Queen’s Commendation for
Excellence”.
Sarah Tynan est membre (“Company
Principal”) de l’English National Opera où elle
a interprété les rôles de Tytania (A Midsummer
Night’s Dream), Papagena (Die Zauberflöte),
Iphis (Jephtha), Atalanta (Xerxes), Yum-Yum
(The Mikado) et Sœur Constance (Dialogues
des Carmélites). D’autres engagements incluent
le rôle de Tytania au Théâtre de La Monnaie
de Bruxelles; Bella (The Midsummer Marriage)
au St Endellion Festival sous la direction de
Richard Hickox; Pretty Polly dans Punch and
Judy de Harrison Birtwistle au Teatro Nacional
San João de Porto; la Gouvernante dans The
Turn of the Screw de Britten pour une tournée
du British Council en Russie; Elsie Maynard
(The Yeomen of the Guard) et Gianetta
(The Gondoliers) au Phoenix Opera.
Sarah Tynan a enregistré les rôles de Sœur
Constance (The Carmelites) et Barbarina
(The Marriage of Figaro) pour la série “Opera
in English” de Chandos.
Née à Winchester, Diana Montague
(le Marchand de sable) a étudié au Royal
Northern College of Music de Manchester.
Depuis ses débuts dans le rôle de Zerlina avec
le Touring Opera de Glyndebourne, elle s’est
Née à Londres, Sarah Tynan (la fée Rosée) a
étudié au Royal Northern College of Music
de Manchester et à la Royal Academy of
Music de Londres (avec Penelope Mackay) où
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 54-55
produite au Royal Opera de Covent Garden à
Londres, au Metropolitan Opera de New York,
au Théâtre de la Monnaie à Bruxelles, à l’Opéra
national de Paris-Bastille, au Teatro Colon de
Buenos Aires et aux festivals de Bayreuth et
Salzbourg.
Son répertoire inclut les grands rôles
de mezzo-soprano des opéras de Mozart,
Gluck, Strauss, Rossini, Bellini et Berlioz.
Elle s’est produite dans Benvenuto Cellini
à l’Opéra de Rome; Iphigénie en Tauride à
Buenos Aires, Madrid et au Welsh National
Opera; Albert Herring, Cherubino (Le
nozze di Figaro) et Andromaca (Ermione de
Rossini) à Glyndebourne; Le Comte Ory à
Lausanne, Rome et Glyndebourne; dans le
rôle de Proserpina (Orfeo de Monteverdi)
à Amsterdam; dans Ariadne auf Naxos à
Lisbonne; dans le rôle de Marguerite (La
Damnation de Faust) à Vienne et Genève;
Minerva (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria) à
Amsterdam et Sydney; dans Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg au Royal Opera de Covent
Garden, dans le rôle de Junon (Platée de
Rameau) avec le Royal Opera de Covent
Garden au Festival d’Édimbourg et à Londres;
et Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier) à l’English
National Opera, à Bilbao et au Teatro Real de
Madrid.
Les nombreux enregistrements de Diana
Montague incluent l’Orfeo de Monteverdi,
I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Norma, Iphigénie
en Tauride; pour Opera Rara Rosmonda
d’Inghilterra, Zoraida di Granata et Il crociato
in Egitto; dans la série “Opera in English” de
Chandos, Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro),
Idamante (Idomeneo), Cavalleria rusticana,
Octavian dans Der Rosenkavalier (extraits),
Faust, et deux disques “Great Operatic Arias”.
Le New London Children’s Choir a été fondé
en 1991 par son directeur musical Ronald Corp
dans le but d’introduire des enfants au challenge
et à la joie de chanter et d’interpréter tous les
genres de musique. Le Chœur a réalisé des
dizaines d’enregistrements et de programmes
radiophoniques, et a été invité par de nombreux
grands festivals.
Le New London Children’s Choir s’est
produit en concert à Londres dans la
Huitième Symphonie de Mahler avec le Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra au Royal Albert Hall,
dans la Troisième Symphonie de Mahler avec
le London Symphony Orchestra au Barbican
Center, dans Carmina Burana avec le Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra au Royal Festival Hall
et avec le Bach Choir au Royal Festival Hall, et
dans trois concerts de Blue Peter aux BBC Proms.
55
30/4/07 10:03:05
La riche discographie du New London
Children’s Choir inclut Turandot et Carmen
dans la série “Opera in English” de Chandos,
Casse-Noisette de Tchaïkovski, le Chant des
forêts de Chostakovitch, Ivan le Terrible de
Prokofiev, et St Nicolas de Britten.
il joue également un rôle central dans la
vie musicale britannique en choisissant des
résidences régionales qui sont l’occasion
idéale de développer un programme éducatif
dynamique centré sur la communauté.
Lauréat de nombreux prix, l’ensemble a été
salué unanimement par les critiques pour
ses programmes innovateurs dont l’un des
objectifs principaux est l’interprétation et la
commande d’œuvres nouvelles des plus grands
compositeurs d’aujourd’hui.
Un nombre croissant de concerts de
l’Orchestre sont retransmis par BBC Radio 3,
entre autres sa participation annuelle aux
Promenade Concerts de la BBC. L’orchestre
symphonique le plus enregistré au monde, avec
plus de mille disques à son actif, parmi lesquels
plusieurs bandes originales pour le cinéma et
la télévision, le Philharmonia Orchestra est
réputé dans le monde entier.
Sa discographie comprend, pour Opera
Rara, plusieurs disques de récitals ainsi que
treize intégrales d’opéras et, pour Opera in
English chez Chandos, série financée par
la Peter Moores Foundation The Marriage
of Figaro, The Thieving Magpie, Wozzeck,
Don Giovanni, The Elixir of Love, Lucia
of Lammermoor, Faust, Carmen, Aïda, La
Bohème, Madam Butterfly, Turandot, une
Reconnu comme l’un des plus grands
orchestres du monde, le Philharmonia
Orchestra a depuis dix ans le grand maestro
allemand Christoph von Dohnányi pour chef
principal. Le premier à avoir tenu ce poste fut
Otto Klemperer et l’Orchestre depuis lors a
collaboré avec succès avec Lorin Maazel (au
poste de chef principal assistant), Ricardo
Muti (chef principal et directeur musical),
Giuseppe Sinopoli (directeur musical), une
tradition qui se poursuit aujourd’hui avec Kurt
Sanderling (chef émérite), Vladimir Ashkenazy
(chef lauréat) et Sir Charles Mackerras (chef
principal invité). L’ensemble a également été
associé à des personnalités aussi éminentes
que Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss,
Arturo Toscanini, Guido Cantelli, Herbert von
Karajan et Carlo Maria Giulini. L’Orchestre
continue à collaborer avec des chefs et des
solistes de stature mondiale et recrute les jeunes
instrumentistes les plus talentueux d’Europe.
Orchestre résident au Royal Festival Hall,
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 56-57
version primée de Tosca ainsi que plusieurs
récitals solistes d’airs lyriques avec Bruce Ford,
Diana Montague, Dennis O’Neill, Alastair
Miles, Yvonne Kenny et John Tomlinson.
Le Philharmonia Orchestra consolide
constamment sa réputation internationale
grâce à des tournées régulières et récemment
de prestigieuses résidences au Châtelet Théâtre
Musical à Paris, au Megaron à Athènes et au
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts à New
York.
Opera (1970 –1977), et au Welsh National
Opera dont il fut directeur musical de 1987 à
1992. Il a été un défenseur de la musique de
Janáček dans les capitales européennes, aux
USA et en Australie. Jenůfa est l’une de ses
œuvres préférées.
Il a entretenu une longue collaboration avec
la Philharmonie tchèque et a enregistré à la tête
de cette formation la plupart des œuvres pour
orchestre de Janáček, ainsi que Kat’á Kabanová
et Rusalka de Dvořák. Sa vaste discographie
inclut le cycle primé des opéras de Janáček
réalisé avec le Wiener Philharmoniker au
début des années 1980. Pour Chandos, il
a enregistré la version originale de la Messe
Glagolitique de Janáček, le Psalmus Hungaricus
de Kodály et le Concerto pour violoncelle de
Dvořák. Dans la série Opera in English, il a
enregistré Osud, La traviata, Werther, Julius
Caesar, Mary Stuart, Eugene Onegin, Jenůfa,
The Magic Flute, The Bartered Bride et
The Makropulos Case.
Charles Mackerras a également fait
d’importantes recherches dans le domaine
de la musique du dix-huitième siècle, en
particulier Haendel et Mozart. Il a enregistré
une série consacrée aux opéras de Mozart
et à ceux de Gilbert et Sullivan, ainsi que les
cycles complets des symphonies de Mozart,
Sir Charles Mackerras étudia au Conservatoire
de Musique de Sydney et vint en Angleterre en
1947. Il obtint une bourse du British Council
pour continuer ses études à l’Académie de
Musique de Prague. Son vif intérêt et sa
passion pour la musique de Janáček commença
en 1947 après avoir entendu l’opéra Kat’á
Kabanová dirigé par le grand Václav Talich.
C’est en qualité de chef assistant au Sadler’s
Wells qu’il donna la première de Kat’á
Kabanová dans un pays de langue anglaise
en 1951. Plus tard, il présenta L’Affaire
Makropoulos et La Maison des morts au Sadler’s
Wells. Il continua à diriger des productions
très acclamées d’opéras de Janáček ainsi que
des ouvrages du répertoire habituel quand il
devint directeur musical de l’English National
57
30/4/07 10:03:07
Beethoven et Brahms, plusieurs oratorios
de Haendel et des symphonies de Mahler et
Elgar. Il est actuellement chef principal invité
du Philharmonia Orchestra, chef lauréat du
Scottish Chamber Orchestra et chef émérite
du Welsh National Opera et du San Francisco
Opera.
Charles Mackerras fut nommé commandeur
de l’empire britannique (CBE) en 1974
et anobli en 1979. Il a reçu la Médaille du
Mérite de la République tchèque en 1996 et
fait Companion of the Order of Australia en
1997. En 2003, la reine Elizabeth II l’a nommé
Companion of Honour.
On session: Sarah Tynan
On session: Rosalind Plowright
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 58-59
30/4/07 10:03:08
Hansel, Gretel e Humperdinck
Talvolta ci si chiede se Hänsel und Gretel sia
veramente un’opera per bambini o per adulti.
La risposta, naturalmente, è che è per tutt’e
due. Ai bambini piacciono i motivi facili e i
giochi cantati, la comicità grottesca della strega
con le sue mostruose abitudini alimentari e le
apparizioni soprannaturali, culminanti nella
sequenza della Pantomima del sogno che, negli
allestimenti tradizionali, vede l’ingresso di
quattordici angeli che scendono da una scala
per proteggere i bambini addormentati nella
foresta. Ma queste cose piacciono anche al
bambino che si nasconde dentro ognuno di
noi. Gli adulti probabilmente apprezzeranno
inoltre la ricca orchestrazione di Humperdinck,
la delicata armonia, la sempre valida invenzione
melodica e il magistrale contrappunto, e la
straordinaria varietà di stati d’animo e tessiture,
che vanno da complessità quasi wagneriane
a un’esuberanza danzante che ricorda Johann
Strauss. Tutti aspetti che apprezzano anche i
bambini, almeno a livello inconscio, pur non
conoscendo Wagner o il contrappunto. Ecco
un’opera per tutti.
Più difficile è decidere se questa fiaba, o se
le fiabe in generale, sia adatta ai bambini o
addirittura agli adulti. L’opera di Humperdinck
contiene molte scene divertenti, diversi
momenti confortanti e un lieto fine, ma è
piena anche di elementi inquietanti. Succede,
normalmente, nelle favole, soprattutto in
quelle dei fratelli Grimm.
I due fratelli tedeschi, Jacob Ludwig
(1785 –1863) e Wilhelm Carl (1786 –1859)
Grimm furono illustri accademici ed esperti di
tradizioni popolari ante litteram. Pubblicarono
importanti volumi sulla grammatica, il
vocabolario e il lessico tedesco, ma la loro
opera più famosa fu il volume, curato da
entrambi, dal titolo Kinder- und Hausmärchen
del 1812, poi pervenuto alle generazioni
moderne, grazie a frequenti ristampe, e meglio
noto come Fiabe dei fratelli Grimm. Prima di
allora era stato pubblicato un numero ridotto
quelle che oggi chiamiamo fiabe, ma il successo
della raccolta dei fratelli Grimm incoraggiò
la creazione di molte altre collezioni in tutta
Europa, creando un nuovo genere letterario
importante. L’iniziativa arrivava al momento
giusto: a causa dei profondi cambiamenti nella
società europea durante l’Ottocento, molte di
queste storie popolari della tradizione oralme
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 60-61
avrebbero perso il proprio potere dopo un paio
di generazioni e sarebbero scomparse. I fratelli
Grimm e i loro seguaci salvarono gran parte
di questo materiale che diversamente sarebbe
stato perduto per sempre.
Hansel e Gretel comparve nella prima
edizione delle loro fiabe. La storia è ancora
più crudele dell’adattamento realizzato dalla
sorella di Humperdinck, Adelheid Wette,
e che poi divenne la sua opera più famosa.
Il padre e la madre di Hansel e Gretel (la
madre si sarebbe poi trasformata in matrigna,
personaggio un po’ meno inquietante, nella
seconda edizione e in quelle successive) sono
talmente poveri che decidono di “perdere” i
bambini nella foresta, per potere avere di che
sfamarsi. È la madre a concepire l’idea e a
convincere il marito, contro la sua volontà. Al
primo tentativo, Hansel riesce a salvarsi con la
sorellina grazie a un furbo accorgimento (lascia
cadere sassolini lucenti lungo il percorso e per
ritornare seguendoli a ritroso), ma la seconda
volta è costretto a utilizzare briciole di pane,
che verranno prevedibilmente mangiate dagli
uccelli. I due bambini si smarriscono, scoprono
la strega e la sua casa, poi uccidono la vecchia
come nell’opera (anche se non liberano altri
bambini trasformati in dolci), poi riescono
a ritrovare la via di casa, dove scoprono, con
indubbio sollievo, che la madre/matrigna nel
frattempo è morta.
Non è necessario fare necessariamente
ricorso all’approccio freudiano per rilevare
il collegamento occulto tra la figura della
madre/matrigna e quella della strega,
soprattutto considerata la morte più o
meno contemporanea di entrambe. Questo
rapporto psicologico è evidenziato negli
allestimenti dell’opera in cui i due ruoli
vengono interpretati dalla stessa cantante
(per quanto questa non fosse l’intenzione
di Humperdinck e non è stata seguita nella
presente registrazione). Un’altra tradizione
negli allestimenti, comune soprattutto in
Germania, è quella di affidare il ruolo della
strega a un tenore travestito da donna.
Entrambe sono idee interessanti, che però
si escludono a vicenda. Che la versione di
Wette/Humperdinck non solo consenta a
Gertrud di vivere ma di rallegrarsi di ritrovare i
figli aggiunge all’epilogo un calore profondo a
modo suo quanto la cupa versione dei Grimm,
assicurando con più probabilità il successo
teatrale.
L’opera di Humperdinck appartiene
alla sottocategoria tedesca delle cosiddette
Märchenoper, o in questo caso Märchenspiel
(opere fiabesche: come vedremo, Hänsel und
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30/4/07 10:03:13
Gretel originariamente non fu un’opera). La
tradizione si sviluppò sulla scia del rinnovato
interesse per il racconto popolare o fiabesco
suscitato dai fratelli Grimm e raggiunse la
sua piena fioritura alla fine dell’Ottocento
e all’inizio del Novecento. In questo genere
si specializzarono una serie di compositori,
soprattutto lo stesso Humperdinck, che si
ispirò ancora una volta ai fratelli Grimm
per Die sieben Geislein (I sette capretti) nel
1895, a Charles Perrault per Dornröschen
(La bella addormentata) nel 1902, e a
un racconto popolare inventato di Ernst
Rosmer (pseudonimo del drammaturgo
Else Bernstein-Porges, che sarebbe
sopravvissuto al campo di concentramento
di Terezín, spegnendosi a 82 anni nel 1949)
per Königskinder (I figli del re, versione
finale 1910). L’altro importante esponente
fu Siegfried, figlio di Richard Wagner
(1869–1930), egli stesso influenzato da
Humperdinck, che compose diciotto opere,
diverse delle quali sono Märchenoper,
un genere da lui esplorato non per le sue
qualità di evasione, ma come mezzo di
affrontare difficili problematiche morali
ed emotive. Recenti revival di brani come
Schwarzschwanenreich (Il regno del Cigno
nero, 1910) e Der Friedensengel (L’angelo
della pace, 1914) evidenziano la sua voce
propria, talvolta originale e valida, purtroppo
soffocata dal tremendo fracasso di quella, ben
superiore, del padre.
All’inizio Adelheid Wette chiese al fratello
solo di musicare alcuni Lieder per un lavoro
teatrale ispirato ad Hansel e Gretel (alcuni dei
passaggi più semplici dell’opera, compresi
quelli che attingono a veri canti popolari,
rispecchiano questi esordi). In seguito il
lavoro fu ampliato e trasformato in Singspiel,
in cui si alternano parti cantate e recitate.
Un ampliamento ulteriore lo trasformò in
un’opera completa, con alcune consistenti
sezioni orchestrali. La straordinaria coerenza
del risultato finale è in sé un miracolo. Le
transizioni di Humperdinck sono talmente
abili che non si notano discrepanze. È un
esempio perfetto del precetto di Wagner: l’arte
della composizione è l’arte della transizione.
Cosa interessante, Königskinder (I figli
del re), la seconda delle opere famose di
Humperdinck, si sviluppò secondo linee
simili. Inizialmente concepita come musica di
scena per un lavoro teatrale nel 1894, fu poi
rimaneggiata (1897) come melodramma con
la tecnica dello Sprechgesang – successivamente
adottato da Schoenberg e Berg, in cui le
parole sono annotate esattamente dal punto
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 62-63
di vista ritmico, ma lasciate molto più vaghe
per quanto riguarda il tono – prima di
raggiungere la forma finale di opera completa
nel 1910. Königskinder non viene riproposta
spesso, ma quando questo accade la partitura
si rivela ricca e affascinante. Probabilmente
non ebbe un successo più ampio perché il
suo tono è tanto più tenebroso di quello di
Hansel e Gretel. I figli del re del titolo – la loro
simbolica nobiltà non è ereditata nel caso di
uno dei due, ma in qualche misterioso senso
risulta innata – alla fine muoiono. Forse,
dopo tutto, il pubblico preferisce il lieto
fine. A giudicare dalla qualità di queste due
opere, forse è un peccato che il resto della
produzione di Humperdinck sia rimasto
ignorato. Il compositore appare vittima del
suo primo successo, come altri il cui nome
rimane legato solo a un’opera, per esempio
Mascagni e Leoncavallo. Tutti volevano
semplicemente un’altra Hansel e Gretel. Anche
questo è comprensibile. Non appena ne lesse
la partitura, Richard Strauss la salutò come un
capolavoro; ed era senz’altro un intenditore.
Ciononostante, Humperdinck ebbe una
lunga e distinta carriera di compositore e
maestro. Vale la pena di ricordare in breve
la sua biografia. Nato a Siegburg, nei pressi
di Colonia, nel 1854, iniziò a prendere
lezioni di pianoforte a sette anni e dopo
aver assistito alla sua prima opera all’età di
quattordici anni iniziò a comporre. Sebbene
il padre ostacolasse le sue ambizioni musicali,
gli permise di iscriversi al conservatorio
di Colonia a diciotto anni. Humperdinck
studiò coscienziosamente per diversi
anni con maestri minori come Hiller,
Rheinberger e Lachner, e vinse una serie
di premi. Ancora più importante fu il suo
incontro (1880) con Richard Wagner, che
lo invitò successivamente a Bayreuth, dove
Humperdinck fu suo assistente musicale
nella preparazione del primo allestimento del
Parsifal nel 1882.
Durante la sua carriera, Humperdinck fu
insegnante e critico a periodi alterni, ma le
sue sorti cambiarono con il successo dell’opera
fiabesca Hänsel und Gretel, che raggiunse
le scene poco prima del Natale 1893.
L’accoglienza fu spettacolare: in un anno fu
accettata da ben settantadue teatri e poi entrò
nel repertorio.
Il compositore continuò a produrre opere,
per lo più comiche o fiabesche, ma Hänsel
und Gretel rimane l’esempio più significativo,
e riscosse un’enorme fama internazionale,
dimostrata dal fatto che, nel 1910, il
Metropolitan di New York allestì la prima
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30/4/07 10:03:14
di Königskinder. Il successivo impegno di un
certo rilievo portò Humperdinck a Londra,
su richiesta del grande regista teatrale Max
Reinhardt. Ispirato a una leggenda medievale
trasformata in dramma da Karl Vollmöller, lo
spettacolare The Miracle vide la prima nelle
sale dell’esposizione di Olympia nel 1911,
e Humperdinck compose una partitura di
accompagnamento. La vicenda narra la storia
di una suora che abbandona l’ordine per fare
esperienza di vita, ma scopre al suo ritorno
da penitente che la sua mancanza non è stata
notata perché il suo posto è stato occupato
nientemeno che dalla vergine Maria. La
produzione di Reinhardt, che impegnò ogni
sera migliaia di interpreti, fu riproposta a
New York nel 1924 e filmata due volte. Le
altre opere di Humperdinck comprendono
musica di scena (soprattutto una sequenza per
Shakespeare, composta anche in questo caso
per Reinhardt), brani corali, lieder e musica da
camera. Il compositore morì a Neustrelitz, non
lontano da Berlino, nel 1921.
Fu Richard Strauss – grande direttore oltre
che grande compositore di opere liriche – a
dirigere la prima esecuzione di Hänsel und
Gretel al Teatro di Corte di Weimar la sera
dell’antivigilia di Natale del 1893. Il giorno
di Santo Stefano del 1894, l’opera fu allestita
per la prima volta nel Regno Unito, presso il
Daly’s Theatre di Londra, in inglese. Nell’aprile
successivo era già stata rappresentata qui cento
volte. Quando il Daly’s fu richiesto per un
altro spettacolo, Hansel and Gretel si trasferì al
Gaiety, dove fu proposta nel corso di alcune
matinée insieme con Bastien and Bastienne,
una delle prime commedie di Mozart. In
seguito si trasferì al Princess’s Theatre, quindi
al Savoy. Il pubblico del Covent Garden vi
assistè per la prima volta nel 1896, quando
venne eseguita ancora una volta in inglese.
Nel 1923 lo spettacolo in inglese allestito dalla
British National Opera Company al Covent
Garden divenne la prima opera radiotrasmessa
in Europa dalla BBC.
La prima americana ebbe luogo presso Daly’s
Theatre di New York l’8 ottobre 1895, sempre
in lingua inglese. L’opera entrò nel repertorio
del Metropolitan il 25 novembre 1905 (il
compositore fu presente al primo spettacolo), e
il giorno di Natale del 1931 fu la prima a essere
trasmessa dal vivo dal Met. Tra gli allestimenti
recenti di maggior successo nel Regno Unito
ricordiamo la versione di David Pountney per
English National Opera, che aprì al London
Coliseum il 16 dicembre 1987 inizialmente
con la direzione di Mark Elder, e quella di
Richard Jones per la Welsh National Opera,
64
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 64-65
felici nella stanza. 8 – 9 Peter rimane
inorridito quando viene a sapere che i bambini
non sono a casa e sono stati inviati nel bosco
a raccogliere fragole: nella foresta abita una
strega che attira i bambini nella sua casetta e li
inforna vivi per trasformarli in biscotti! I due si
precipitano fuori a cercare i bambini.
diretta inizialmente da Vladimir Jurowski,
che aprì presso il New Theatre di Cardiff il
10 dicembre 1998.
© 2007 George Hall
Sinossi
COMPACT DISC ONE
Atto II
Nel bosco
10
Preludio. 11 – 12 Gretel intreccia una
ghirlanda di fiori, mentre Hansel mangia le
fragole che ha raccolto. Quando hanno finito
le fragole, i bambini cominciano a cercarne
altre, ma ormai si è fatto buio 13 e capiscono
di essersi smarriti. Si alza una fitta nebbia e
i bambini hanno paura, 14 ma poi la nebbia
si dirada e compare il nano Sabbiolino, che
sparge polvere sui loro occhi. 15 Dopo aver
recitato le preghiere della sera, i bambini si
addormentano insieme. La nebbia li avvolge
e si trasforma in una scala di nuvole, mentre
quattordici angeli scendono a proteggerli
durante la notte. 16 Pantomima.
1
Ouverture
Atto I
La casa del fabbricante di scope
Lasciati a casa dai genitori, Hansel fabbrica
scope per il padre, mentre sua sorella Gretel
prepara delle calze a maglia. 2 – 4 Per
distrarre il fratello, Gretel gli canta una
canzone; Hansel si unisce a lei e ben presto
tutti e due cantano e ballano. 5 – 6 Quando
rientra Gertrude, la madre, va su tutte le furie
vedendo che i figli hanno lavorato pochissimo
e accidentalmente rovescia la brocca del latte.
Presa dall’ira, spedisce i bambini a raccogliere
fragole nel bosco, poi si siede e si addormenta,
esausta.
COMPACT DISC TWO
Rientra Peter, il padre dei bambini,
trionfante. È riuscito a vendere tutte le scope e
ha portato del cibo a casa. I genitori danzano
7
Atto III
La casetta di panpepato
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30/4/07 10:03:17
1
Introduzione. 2 – 3 Mentre albeggia,
arriva la fata della rugiada e ne spruzza
alcune gocce sui bambini per svegliarli.
4
Mentre i fratelli giocano, la nebbia si
dissolve e compare una casetta di panpepato
circondata da uno steccato di figure di
panpepato. 5 – 6 I bambini lo spezzano
per mangiarlo, ma vengono sorpresi dalla
strega che cattura Hansel gettandogli una
fune intorno al collo. 7 – 9 Il bambino
cerca di liberarsi, ma la strega getta un
incantesimo sui due fratelli, chiude Hansel
nella stalla e spedisce Gretel in casa ad
apparecchiare. 10 Ma Gretel ricorda
l’incantesimo della strega e lo utilizza per
liberare il fratello.
La strega chiede a Gretel di controllare
il forno, ma la bambina fa finta di non
capire e le chiede di mostrarle come si fa.
I bambini spingono in fretta la vecchia nel
forno e chiudono la porta. 11 – 12 Il forno
esplode e le figure di panpepato dello steccato
ridiventano bambini come erano prima di
essere stati infornati. 13 Arrivano i genitori
di Hansel e Gretel e tra la gioia generale si
scopre che la strega si è trasformata in un
dolce di panpepato.
Originaria di Atlanta, Jennifer Larmore
(Hansel) ha studiato presso il Westminster
Choir College di Princeton, New Jersey e
poi privatamente con John Bullock e Regina
Resnik. È famosa per le sue interpretazioni
dei ruoli di coloratura del repertorio barocco
e belcantistico. Il suo nome è associato
soprattutto con il ruolo di Rosina (Il barbiere
di Siviglia), interpretato alla Metropolitan
Opera, alla Staatsoper di Berlino, a Bonn,
Parigi, San Francisco e Buenos Aires.
Altri ruoli comprendono Giovanna
Seymour (Anna Bolena) a Nizza; Mélisande
(Pelléas et Mélisande) a Marsiglia; Isolier (Le
Comte Ory) alla Scala di Milano; Dorabella
(Così fan tutte) al Festival di Salisburgo;
Romeo (I Capuleti e i Montecchi) al Carnegie
Hall di New York, all’Opéra de Paris-Bastille
e a Ginevra; L’ italiana in Algeri alla Deutsche
Oper di Berlino, oltre che a Parigi e Vienna;
Ruggiero (Alcina) con la Chicago Lyric
Opera; Sesto (La clemenzo di Tito) al Gran
Teatro del Liceu di Barcellona; il ruolo di
protagonista in Carmen con la Washington
Opera; Giulio Cesare alla Metropolitan
Opera e a Madrid; il ruolo di protagonista
nell’Orfeo a Madrid; Orlovsky (Die
Fledermaus) in Giappone e al Met, Hansel
(Hänsel und Gretel) alla Metropolitan Opera
Traduzione: Emanuela Guastella
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 66-67
e in concerto ai Prom BBC; Giulietta (Les
Contes d’Hoffmann) alla Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden, e il ruolo di protagonista ne
La Cenerentola alla Metropolitan Opera.
Con oltre settanta titoli al suo attivo,
Jennifer Larmore è il mezzosoprano più
registrato di tutti i tempi. La discografia
comprende una registrazione di Great
Operatic Arias per la serie Opera in English
di Chandos, oltre a Lucia di Lammermoor,
Giulio Cesare, Orfeo, Il barbiere di Siviglia,
La Cenerentola e, per Opera Rara,
L’ incoronazione di Poppea, Bianca e Falliero,
Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra, Francesca
di Foix, e Adelaide di Borgogna. Per il suo
contributo al mondo della musica, la cantante
è stata insignita del titolo di Chevalier de
l’ordre des arts et des lettres nel 2002.
dove ha interpretato i ruoli di Nannetta con
la direzione di Zubin Mehta, Sophie (Der
Rosenkavalier), Zdenka (Arabella), Servilia
(La clemenza di Tito), Ilia (Idomeneo) e
Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro). Ha cantato
Ilia per la Netherlands Opera e per l’Opéra
de Lausanne; è stata protagonista di The
Cunning Little Vixen per la Scottish Opera; ha
interpretato i ruoli di Pamina, Susanna, Ilia,
Marzelline (Fidelio), Norina (Don Pasquale)
e Hero (Beatrice and Benedict) per la Welsh
National Opera, Romilda (Xerxes) e Ginevra
(Ariodante) per la English National Opera.
Rebecca Evans ha un’importante carriera
teatrale in America e ha cantato Susanna e
Zerlina alla Metropolitan Opera, New York,
Susanna alla Santa Fe Opera; Pamina e Adèle
(Die Fledermaus) alla Lyric Opera di Chicago
e Zerlina, Anne Trulove (The Rake’s Progress)
e Adina (L’elisir d’amore) alla San Francisco
Opera.
In concerto è intervenuta ai Prom BBC e al
Festival Internazionale di Edimburgo; è stata
ospite di concerti di gala con Andrea Bocelli e
Luciano Pavarotti; è comparsa al Melbourne
International Festival. Si è esibita in recital
alla Wigmore Hall di Londra e ai festival
di Barcellona, Ravinia, Buxton, Belfast e
Beaulieu-sur Mer.
Rebecca Evans (Gretel) è nata nel Galles del
sud, ha studiato presso la Guildhall School
of Music and Drama e si è perfezionata
con Ronald Schneider a Berlino, grazie al
sostegno della Peter Moores Foundation.
Alla Royal Opera House, Covent Garden,
ha cantato Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Zerlina
(Don Giovanni), Nannetta (Falstaff ) e
Johanna (Sweeney Todd). È ospite regolare
della Bayerische Staatsoper di Monaco,
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La discografia comprende Marzellina
(Fidelio), Pamina (The Magic Flute), Susanna
(The Marriage of Figaro) e Ilia (Idomeneo)
per la serie Opera in English di Chandos,
oltre a Nannetta (Falstaff ) con sir John Eliot
Gardiner, a questi ruoli si aggiungono una
serie di registrazioni di musiche di Gilbert
and Sullivan con sir Charles Mackerras e una
registrazione solistica di brani italiani. Ha
inoltre cantato Belinda sullo schermo in Dido
and Aeneas (sempre pubblicato da Chandos),
ed è stata protagonista di una serie televisiva
per la BBC dal titolo “A Touch of Classics”
con la BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
due opere di Luigi Dallapiccola. La discografia
comprende Queen Elizabeth I (Mary Stuart),
Desdemona (Otello) e Amneris (Aida) per
la serie Opera in English di Chandos, oltre a
La forza del destino con José Carreras,
Il trovatore accanto a Placido Domingo, Elijah
di Mendelssohn (per Chandos), La Vestale,
Les Contes d’Hoffmann, e la Seconda sinfonia
di Mahler.
Robert Hayward (il Padre) ha studiato presso la
Guildhall School of Music and Drama e presso
il National Opera Studio; ha esordito in teatro
nelle vesti del protagonista di Don Giovanni
per la Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Ha
collaborato con la Royal Opera House, English
National Opera, Welsh National Opera,
Opera North, Scottish Opera, Glyndebourne
Festival e Touring Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper
di Monaco, Houston Grand Opera, New
Israeli Opera e Minnesota Opera in un ampio
repertorio che comprende i ruoli di Wotan
e il Viandante nel Ring, Amfortas (Parsifal),
Jokanaan (Salome), Figaro e il Conte Almaviva
(Le nozze di Figaro), i ruoli di protagonista ne
L’Olandese volante, Mazeppa, Saul, Eugenio
Onieghin e Don Giovanni, Iago (Otello),
Ford (Falstaff), Scarpia (Tosca), Marcello (La
bohème), Escamillo (Carmen), Nick Shadow
Rosalind Plowright (la Madre) si è
esibita praticamente in tutti i maggiori
teatri lirici del mondo e ha interpretato
nuovi allestimenti al Covent Garden,
English National Opera, Parigi, Amburgo,
Francoforte, Monaco, Berlino, all’Opera di
Vienna, ad Atene, al Metropolitan, a San
Francisco, Dallas, Houston, San Diego,
Carnegie Hall, La Scala di Milano, Verona,
Firenze, La Fenice di Venezia, Barcellona,
Buenos Aires e Santiago.
Rosalind Plowright ha fatto ritorno al
Covent Garden per Sweeney Todd e ha
debuttato al Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 68-69
(The Rake’s Progress), Golaud (Pelléas et
Mélisande) e Wotan/Viandante nel ciclo del
Ring della English National Opera.
Gli impegni concertistici hanno compreso
Belshazzar’s Feast di Walton, The Mask of Time
di Tippett, Elijah di Mendelssohn, la Nona
sinfonia di Beethoven e la Creazione di Haydn,
The Dream of Gerontius di Elgar, il Requiem
di Mozart e Das klagende Lied e Lieder eines
fahrenden Gesellen di Mahler. La discografia
comprende il Dr Schön (Lulu) nella serie
Opera in English di Chandos, e The Pilgrim’s
Progress, sempre per Chandos.
Alla Royal Opera, Covent Garden Jane
Henschel ha cantato Fricka e Waltraute,
Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera), Klytemnestra,
Mrs Grose (The Turn of the Screw); alla
Scala di Milano è stata Erodiade (Salome),
e Cassandre (Les Troyens). I suoi ruoli
all’Opera di Monaco comprendono Herodias,
Klytemnestra, Ulrica, Mistress Quickly
(Falstaff ) e Ortrud (Lohengrin); alla
Deutsche Oper di Berlino Klytemnestra,
Herodias e Ortrud, all’Opera di Vienna,
Klytemnestra, Fricka e Mistress Quickly.
Il ruolo che la contraddistingue è quello di
Amme (Die Frau ohne Schatten), interpretato
ad Amsterdam, Londra, Los Angeles,
Monaco, Parigi, Vienna, Berlino e al
Metropolitan.
La discografia di Jane Henschel comprende
Verlobung im Traum di Krasa, The Rake’s
Progress, Merlin di Albéniz, The Turn of
the Screw di Britten e l’Ottava sinfonia di
Mahler.
Jane Henschel (la Strega) è nata nel Wisconsin,
ha studiato presso la University of Southern
California e successivamente si è trasferita in
Germania. I suoi ruoli comprendono Baba
il Turco (The Rake’s Progress) ai festival di
Glyndebourne, Saito Kinen e Salisburgo,
Brangäne (Tristan und Isolde) per la Los Angeles
Opera e l’Opéra di Parigi, Klytemnestra
(Elektra) per la San Francisco Opera, la
Principessa (Suor Angelica) con l’Orchestra del
Concertgebouw diretta da Riccardo Chailly,
Dialogues des Carmélites ad Amsterdam,
Kostelnička (Jenůfa) diretta da Seiji Ozawa in
Giappone e Kabanicka (Katá Kabanova) per il
Festival di Salisburgo.
Sarah Tynan (Fata della rugiada) è nata a
Londra e ha studiato presso il Royal Northern
College of Music e presso la Royal Academy
of Music (con Penelope Mackay), dove ha
ricevuto una Queen’s Commendation for
Excellence.
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30/4/07 10:03:21
Da quando è diventata solista della English
National Opera, ha interpretato, tra l’altro, i
ruoli di Tytania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream),
Papagena (The Magic Flute), Iphis (Jephtha),
Atalanta (Xerxes), Yum-Yum (The Mikado) e
suor Constance (The Carmelites). Altri impegni
teatrali comprendono Tytania per il teatro La
Monnaie di Bruxelles; Bella (The Midsummer
Marriage) per il festival di St Endellion con
Richard Hickox; Pretty Polly in Punch and Judy
di Birtwistle al Teatro Nacional San João di
Porto; la Governante in The Turn of the Screw
di Britten durante una tournée del British
Council in Russia; Elsie Maynard (The Yeomen
of the Guard) e Gianetta (The Gondoliers) per la
Phoenix Opera.
Ha registrato i ruoli di suor Constance
(The Carmelites) e Barbarina (The Marriage
of Figaro) per la serie Opera in English di
Chandos.
Teatro Colón di Buenos Aires e ha partecipato
ai festival di Bayreuth e Salisburgo.
Il suo repertorio include i principali ruoli
per mezzosoprano nelle opere di Mozart,
Gluck, Strauss, Rossini, Bellini e Berlioz, e
i suoi impegni hanno compreso Benvenuto
Cellini con l’Opera di Roma, Iphigénie en
Tauride a Buenos Aires, Madrid e con la Welsh
National Opera, Albert Herring, Cherubino
(Le nozze di Figaro) e Andromaca nell’Ermione
di Rossini a Glyndebourne, Le Comte Ory a
Losanna, Roma e Glyndebourne, Proserpina
nell’Orfeo di Monteverdi ad Amsterdam;
Ariadne auf Naxos a Lisbona, Marguerite (La
Damnation de Faust) a Vienna e Ginevra,
Minerva (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria) ad
Amsterdam e Sydney, Die Meistersinger von
Nürnberg alla Royal Opera House Covent
Garden, Junon in Platée di Rameau con la
Royal Opera al Festival di Edimburgo e a
Londra, e Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier) alla
English National Opera, a Bilbao e al Teatro
Real di Madrid.
La ricca discografia di Diana Montagne
comprende Orfeo di Monteverdi, I Capuleti e
i Montecchi, Norma, Iphigénie en Tauride; per
Opera Rara Rosmonda d’Inghilterra, Zoraida
di Granata e Il crociato in Egitto; per la serie
Opera in English di Chandos, Cherubino
Diana Montague (Nano Sabbiolino) è nata
a Winchester e ha studiato presso il Royal
Northern College of Music. Dopo l’esordio
nelle vesti di Zerlina con la Glyndebourne
Touring Opera è comparsa alla Royal Opera
House, Covent Garden, la Metropolitan Opera
di New York, il Théâtre de la Monnaie di
Bruxelles, l’Opéra national de Paris-Bastille, il
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 70-71
(The Marriage of Figaro), Idamante (Idomeneo),
Cavalleria rusticana, Octavian in Der
Rosenkavalier (momenti salienti), Faust, e due
dischi di Great Operatic Arias.
La Philharmonia Orchestra, una delle più
grandi orchestre del mondo, è diretta per
la decima stagione consecutiva dal famoso
maestro tedesco Christoph von Dohnányi, in
qualità di Direttore Principale. In precedenza
questa carica era appartenuta a Otto Klemperer
e da allora l’Orchestra ha collaborato con nomi
di prestigio come Lorin Maazel (Direttore
Principale Associato), Riccardo Muti (Direttore
Principale e Direttore Musicale), Giuseppe
Sinopoli (Direttore Musicale) e, attualmente,
Kurt Sanderling (Direttore Emerito), Vladimir
Ashkenazy (Direttore Laureato) e Sir Charles
Mackerras (Direttore Principale Ospite), oltre
che con artisti importanti come Wilhelm
Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, Arturo Toscanini,
Guido Cantelli, Herbert von Karajan e Carlo
Maria Giulini. L’Orchestra continua a collaborare
con direttori e solisti di fama mondiale, oltre ad
attrarre nelle sue fila i giovani musicisti europei di
maggiore talento.
Orchestra Residente presso la Royal Festival
Hall di Londra, occupa una posizione centrale
nella vita musicale britannica anche attraverso
residenze regionali che offrono un’opportunità
ideale per espandere il suo dinamico
programma educativo, basato sulle comunità.
Vincitrice di numerosi premi, è stata lodata
all’unanimità dai critici per la sua politica di
Il New London Children’s Choir è stato
costituito dal suo Direttore Musicale
Ronald Corp nel 1991 con l’obiettivo di
entusiasmare al canto i più giovani e stimolarli
all’interpretazione di musica di ogni genere. Il
Coro ha al suo attivo decine di registrazioni e
trasmissioni ed è stato invitato a comparire a
numerosi importanti festival.
Tra i momenti salienti dell’attività
concertistica del Coro vanno ricordati
la Sinfonia n. 8 di Mahler con la Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra alla Royal Albert
Hall, la Sinfonia n. 3 di Mahler con la London
Symphony Orchestra al Barbican, Carmina
Burana alla Royal Festival Hall con la Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra e con il Bach Choir, e
tre Prom BBC sponsorizzati da Blue Peter, una
trasmissione per bambini.
La vasta discografia del New London
Children’s Choir comprende Turandot e
Carmen nell’ambito della serie Opera in English
di Chandos, Lo schiaccianoci di Čaikovskij,
Il canto delle foreste di Shostakovich, Ivan il
Terribile di Prokofiev e St Nicolas di Britten.
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30/4/07 10:03:23
programmazione particolarmente innovativa e
fortemente incentrata sull’impegno ad eseguire
e commissionare musiche nuove firmate dai
maggiori compositori contemporanei.
I concerti dell’Orchestra sono trasmessi
sempre più frequentemente da BBC Radio 3,
incluso l’apparizione annuale in occasione
dei BBC Proms. La Philharmonia Orchestra
gode di una reputazione a livello mondiale
ed è l’orchestra sinfonica che ha inciso di più
in tutto il mondo, con un catalogo di oltre
1000 incisioni, tra cui una serie di colonne
sonore per film e televisione. La sua discografia
include, per Opera Rara, numerosi dischi
di recital, oltre a tredici opere complete, e
nella serie Opera in English per Chandos,
sponsorizzata dalla Peter Moores Foundation,
The Marriage of Figaro, The Thieving Magpie,
Wozzeck, Don Giovanni, The Elixir of Love,
Lucia of Lammermoor, Faust, Carmen, Aida,
La Bohème, Madam Butterfly, Turandot, la Tosca,
vincitrice di un premio, e vari album di recital,
con assoli di arie d’opera eseguite da Bruce Ford,
Diana Montague, Dennis O’Neill, Alastair
Miles, Yvonne Kenny e John Tomlinson. La
Philharmonia Orchestra continua a consolidare la
sua fama internazionale con frequenti tournèe e
attraverso le recenti, prestigiose residenze presso il
Châtelet Théâtre Musical di Parigi, il Megaron di
Atene e il Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
di New York.
Sir Charles Mackerras ha studiato presso il
Conservatorio di Sydney e si è trasferito in
Inghilterra nel 1947. Ha ottenuto una borsa di
studio del British Council per proseguire gli
studi presso l’Accademia Musicale di Praga.
Nel 1947 nasceva il suo appassionato interesse
per Janáček, dopo aver ascoltato la Katá
Kabánova diretta dal grande Václav Talich.
In qualità di vicedirettore d’orchestra a
Sadler’s Wells nel 1951 Mackerras proponeva
la prima esecuzione di Katá Kabánova
nel mondo anglofono. Il seguito avrebbe
presentato L’affare Makropoulos e Da una
casa di morti a Sadler’s Wells; avrebbe poi
continuato a dirigere le opere di Janáček in
allestimenti di grande successo, oltre a un
repertorio più tradizionale alla sua nomina
a Direttore musicale della English National
Opera (1970 – 77) e in seguito della Welsh
National Opera (1987 – 1992). È stato un
pioniere della diffusione della musica di
Janáček nelle capitali europee, negli USA e in
Australia. Una delle sue opere predilette
è Jenůfa.
Sir Charles Mackerras ha al suo attivo una
lunga collaborazione con la Filarmonica ceca,
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 72-73
Mozart. Ha registrato opere di Mozart e
Gilbert e Sullivan oltre a una serie completa
delle sinfonie di Mozart, Beethoven e Brahms,
numerosi oratori di Handel e sinfonie di
Mahler ed Elgar. Attualmente è Principal Guest
Conductor della Philharmonia Orchestra,
Conductor Laureate della Scottish Chamber
Orchestra e Conductor Emeritus della Welsh
National Opera e della San Francisco Opera.
Sir Charles Mackerras ha ricevuto diverse
onorificenze, tra cui il CBE nel 1974, seguito
dalla nomina a baronetto nel 1979, la
Medaglia di Merito della Repubblica Ceca nel
1996 e il titolo di Companion of the Order of
Australia nel 1997. Nel 2003 all’elenco delle
onorificenze reali britanniche si è aggiunto il
Companion of Honour.
con cui ha registrato la maggior parte delle
opere orchestrali di Janáček oltre a
Katá Kabánova e Rusalka di Dvořák. La sua
vasta discografia comprende un premiato
ciclo di opere di Janáček con i Wiener
Philharmoniker all’inizio degli anni Ottanta.
Le registrazioni per Chandos comprendono
la versione originale della Messa glagolitica di
Janáček, Psalmus Hungaricus di Kodály e il
Concerto per violoncello di Dvořák. Per la
serie Opera in English ha registrato Osud,
La traviata, Werther, Julius Caesar, Mary Stuart,
Eugene Onegin, Jenůfa, The Magic Flute, The
Bartered Bride e The Makropulos Case.
Sir Charles Mackerras ha svolto inoltre
ricerche approfondite sulla musica del XVIII
secolo, soprattutto quella di Handel and
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30/4/07 10:03:25
On session: New London Children’s Choir
74
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 74-75
75
30/4/07 10:03:26
COMPACT DISC ONE
1
I’ll sell my old mattress and sleep where I please,
I’d rather have a bite than be bitten by…
Overture
Gretel (interrupting)
Oh, it’s hunger that bites me.
Act I
Home: the Broom-Maker’s Cottage.
Hansel (continuing)
…Fleas!
(throwing his work aside and getting up)
Oh how I wish Mother would hurry up home.
Scene 1
A small and poorly furnished room. In the
background a door; a small window near it, looking
on to the forest. On the left a fireplace with chimney
above it. On the walls are hanging brooms of
various sizes. Hansel is sitting by the door, making
brooms, and Gretel opposite him by the fireplace,
knitting a stocking.
2
Gretel (getting up)
Oh yes, my tummy thinks it could eat a stone.
Hansel
Just crusts of bread, that’s all we’ve had,
hunger keeps gnawing, driving you mad.
Gretel
Goosey goosey gander, the mouse in the straw
put out his little head, can you guess what he
saw?
The geese had no shoes in the ice and the snow,
cobbler can’t you make some? The answer was…
Gretel
Hush, Hansel, think of our father’s refrain
when mother curses or complains:
‘When in need or dark despair
God will always hear our prayer.’
Hansel (interrupting)
Which is why they were barefoot.
Hansel
So nicely said, so pat, so neat,
but such fancy words are no good to eat.
Oh Gretel, I wonder how it would feel
if we’d just gorged a scrumptious meal?
Strawberry pancakes and beef with noodles,
when did Mum last make apple strudels?
Oh Gretel, I wish…
Gretel (continuing)
No!
Hansel
Hey diddle dumpling I sit here half dead!
So who will lend me money to buy me some
bread?
76
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 76-77
3
Gretel (stopping him)
Stop. What a sulky glare!
What is it doing there, that gruesome stare?
It’s eyes are askew – phew, what a pout!
Watch how I’m chasing that Gremlin out!
(She takes a broom in her hand.)
Down with the dumps, out with the grumps,
we’ll do without you, spite you and flout you,
keep your nose out, you pedlar of doubt you!
Gremlin, gremlin, grumpy old grout,
griping and groaning and grousing about,
pack your bag, on your nag, ill-mannered lout.
Down with the dumps, out with the grumps,
hunger gets stronger, bites even longer.
Why make a song or dance,
What is wrong there?
Gremlin Gremlin, grumpy old grout,
griping and groaning and grousing about,
pack your bag, on your nag, ill-mannered lout!
Hansel
Oh a secret. Now I can hardly wait.
Gretel
On one condition then.
No more complaints.
There’s milk in that jug full to the brim.
The neighbours could see we were looking thin!
When mother comes we’ll both get our wish,
rice pudding, rice pudding our fav’rite dish!
Hansel (with glee)
Rice pudding. Pudding, pudding brimming with
cream!
I’m ready if it’s not just a dream!
How thick is the cream on the top?
Let’s taste it.
(He licks the cream off his finger.)
Oh wonderful!
I’d like to guzzle all of it!
Hansel (seizes the broom also)
Down with the dumps, out with the grumps
seething with longing, hunger pains are
thronging,
they’re far too strong, can’t bear it any longer.
Gremlin, gremlin, gremlin, grumpy old grout,
griping and groaning and grousing about,
pack your bag, on your nag, you lout!
Gretel (gives him a rap on his fingers)
Stop, Hansel, stop it. Thieving again.
Keep your hands off it or I’ll get the blame.
Now leave it and get back to work, be quick!
If you get caught we’ll get the stick.
Mother is coming and nothing’s been done,
and Hansel getting thrashed is not much fun.
Gretel (pretending to sweep away)
Alright, I’ll tell you on one condition
just what I have found on my secret mission.
Hansel (sticking his hands in his trouser pockets)
Work again, I’ve had enough.
Why is work such boring stuff?
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30/4/07 10:03:30
‘Hansel is lazy! Slacking again!’
We should be playing our dancing game.
4
Gretel
Brother you have learnt it well,
dancing breaks the gremlin’s spell.
Once the boy gets down to school,
maybe he’s not such a fool.
Make your head go nick, nick, nick,
make your fingers go click click click,
one foot in, one foot out,
take a bow and turn about.
Gretel
Dancing! Dancing! And only we know the way:
the magic dance is our secret play.
Singing the song that our Granny sings us:
grasping the magic power that it brings us.
(clapping her hands)
Little brother dance with me,
take my hand, advance with me,
one foot in, one foot out,
bow your head and turn about.
Hansel
Make your head go nick, nick, nick,
make your fingers go click click click,
one foot in, one foot out,
bow and turn about.
(Hansel tries to dance, but is very awkward.)
Hansel
Sister I’m a sorry sight;
which is left and which is right?
Show me once more how it goes,
then I might avoid your toes.
Gretel
Dance it nimble, dance it neat,
make it twinkle from your feet.
When two children join together,
they are more than twice as clever.
(takes Hansel by the arm)
Come!
Gretel
With your foot you tap tap tap,
with your hands you clap clap clap,
one foot in, one foot out,
bow your head and turn about.
Hansel
I love to dance and sing and play my games
hate to be alone.
Let’s dance away our hunger pains,
the dance is all we own.
Hansel
With your foot you tap tap tap,
with your hands you clap clap clap,
one foot in, one foot out,
bow your head and turn about.
Gretel
I love to dance and sing and play my games
hate to be alone.
78
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 78-79
Let’s dance away our hunger pains,
the dance is all we own.
(pulls Hansel along, and dances round him then
gives him a push)
Tra-la-la etc
Turn around again and do it faster
can’t you make your legs do more than that?
Come over here, you lazy little rat!
Hansel
Now don’t be cross you bossy girl,
I’ll catch you, you will see!
(They dance as before.)
Gretel
Tra-la-la! etc
Turn yourself around my slow-coach Hansel,
turn yourself around and join the dance.
Hansel (gruffly)
Let go of me, let go of me, I’m not your little
brat.
A man has more important work than dancing
with a girl.
Gretel and Hansel
Yes spin until your head’s askew,
dance until you drop.
And if you wear your stockings through,
let mother sew them up.
(They dance by turns as before. Then they seize each
other’s hands and dance round and round, quicker
and quicker, until at last they lose their balance and
tumble over one another onto the floor.)
Gretel
But big boy I’m too strong for you,
I’ll make you join the whirl.
(dances round Hansel as before and gives him a
push)
Tra-la-la etc
Mind you don’t fall over my dear Hansel,
look at him he’s split his brand new pants.
5
Hansel (dances round Gretel)
Tra-la-la! etc
You naughty girl, you naughty girl, your stocking
has a hole.
Scene 2
Mother
Hansel!
(At this moment the door opens; the children see
their mother coming and jump up quickly.)
Gretel
Oh heavens!
Gretel
You stubborn boy, you’ll do as you are told.
A wicked child is not allowed
to share the dance with me.
Hansel
Mother. It’s mother!
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30/4/07 10:03:31
Mother
What on earth d’you think you are doing?
Gretel (confused)
Well Hansel was feeling…
Hansel
It’s Gretel was squealing…
Mother (comes in, unstraps her basket and sets it
down)
Children, you’ll bring this fam’ly to ruin.
You are both selfish, you should be working,
what do I find? Instead you’ve been shirking.
You never think how your parents suffer.
Each day for us the struggle gets tougher.
(gives Hansel a box on the ear)
Take that!
Let’s see, how much you have done.
(turning round)
What Gretel?
Not one is finished, not one?
And you, you waster, you’ve had your warning:
‘Work hard’ I said when I left you this morning.
You don’t do a stroke, but you still want feeding,
maybe you’ll learn when your backsides are
bleeding!
(In her anger at the children she knocks the milk jug
which smashes to pieces on the floor.)
Heavens! You’ve made me ruin the supper.
6
(She lays her head down on her arms and drops
asleep.)
80
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 80-81
(weeping. She looks at her skirt, down which the
milk is streaming.)
Now we are really scuppered.
(Hansel sniggers.)
How dare you, I saw you grin.
(Stick in hand, she goes for Hansel who runs out of
the door.)
Wait, wait till your father comes in.
(With sudden energy she snatches a basket from the
wall and thrusts it into Gretel’s hand.)
Out! Out! Go at once! Find me some
strawberries, little runts.
Come back when the basket’s full to the brim,
or else you brats, you’ll be torn limb from limb
(The children run off into the forest.)
(She sits down by the table, exhausted.)
My jug all in bits and guess who broke you!
Yes, that’s what happens when children provoke
you.
(wringing her hands)
My God we’re desperate,
(sobbing)
we’ve nothing to live on, the children will starve
and there’s nothing to give them.
No stock in the stock-pot, no crust in the bin,
no wonder they’re feeble and thin.
(She rests her head on her hand.)
I’m exhausted. Weary, I’m finished.
Dear God give us money.
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, that’s why I’m a
drunken sot.
(Reels over to his sleeping wife and gives her a
smacking kiss.)
Mother look what I have brought.
Scene 3
A voice is heard in the distance.
7
Father
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, light the fire, your
husband’s here!
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, full of luck and full of
cheer!
(somewhat nearer)
Curse the poor, how much we suffer,
work all day and get no supper,
in your pocket a burning hole!
In your stomach a gnawing hole.
(plaintively)
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, hunger eats away your
soul.
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, hunger eats away your
soul.
(Father’s face appears at the window, and during
the following he comes into the room in a very lively
mood, with a basket on his back.)
Let the poor kick off their traces,
happiness has many faces.
But the truth, the truth’s no joke,
poor men bear a heavy yoke.
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, hungry feeders often
choke!
(He puts down his basket.)
Yes hunger cooks the finest dish,
for all he does is wish and wish.
Who cares if he’s a chef or not,
you can’t cook much with an empty pot.
Mother (rubbing her eyes)
Oh no!
What’s this bawling for goodness sake,
that ca-caterwauling that’s made me awake?
Father (inarticulately)
Well, Well!
It is a beast a lion at least,
whose hungry yell demands his feast.
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, hunger is a greedy beast.
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la-la, bites and fights to be
released.
Mother
I can tell that rotten skunk has come home
drunk,
he’s full of wine so let him pack his trunk.
Father
Now, now!
It’s been a wonderful day, high time that you
were cuddled.
(wants to kiss her)
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30/4/07 10:03:32
Mother (pushing him angrily from here)
Get off! To you it looks like that way,
because your brain’s befuddled.
(He turns the basket topsy-turvy, and a lot of
potatoes roll out.)
Grease the pans and mix the batter,
bring out every dish and platter.
Father
All right!
(turning to his basket)
My wife is such a sweet,
maybe she’ll tell me what’s to eat.
Father (He seizes her by the arm and dances round
the room with her.)
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, hopsasa funny how the
thought of food.
(He knocks down some tin pots off the chimneypiece with a clatter.)
8
Father
So here’s my story from the top.
(He sits down. Meanwhile Mother packs away the
things, lights a fire, breaks eggs into a saucepan, etc.)
Back in eighteen-forty-three,
we achieved democracy
so they’ve planned a grand celebration,
fanfares, flags and hymns to the nation.
Thus the brushes business is booming,
every blade of grass needs grooming.
Even in the roughest quarter,
there’s a run on soap and water.
Every street looks oh so quaint!
Spick and span in fresh white paint!
Buy brushes! Buy brushes!
And I soon found that a boomtown is a
broomtown!
I could have sold them ten times over,
and at sky high prices, I’m in clover!
Father
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, cheer up Mother,
salvation’s here,
and there’s every cause to cheer.
(He takes his basket and begins to display the
contents.)
Look Mother, what d’you think of this for
supper?
Mother
What? What? I’m dreaming.
Lard and butter, flour and sausage, eggs and
honey,
(helping him to unpack it)
man where did you find the money?
Carrots, onions, and you’ve found some tea, a
quarter pound!
82
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 82-83
Mother and Father
Heat the stove and boil the kettle.
Mother (joining in)
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la, hopsasa puts you in a
better mood!
Mother
This menu is a simple matter,
a masterpiece: an empty platter!
Empty cup, empty plate,
and my purse in the self-same state!
Mother (hastily)
If you’re nice with them they abuse it,
if you give them work to do they refuse it.
God knows what noise they were making,
dancing so wildly the house was shaking.
Well, I got so angry I thought I’d choke.
Father and Mother
And so that was how the jug got broke!
(laughing heartily)
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Father (he puts the glass of kummel to his lips but
suddenly stops short)
But wait, say where are the children?
Hansel and Gretel, why aren’t they here?
Father
You meany grumpy-guts, don’t get so cross.
On a day like today it’s no loss.
I see, you sent them to bed without food?
Mother
Heaven knows
(shrugs her shoulders with a puzzled air)
I’ve no idea.
But there’s one thing I know for sure,
that our jug got smashed on the floor.
Mother (curtly)
No, they went to the Gibbet wood.
Father (horror-struck)
The haunted wood!
(fetches a broom from the wall)
You must be insane!
Father (angrily)
What? They broke the brand new jug?
Mother (with an expression of contempt)
The broomstick!
Don’t hit me with that again.
Mother
And the milk went down the plug.
Father (striking the table with his fist in rage)
Blast those brats!
It’s always the same, while we’re at work they’re
misbehaving.
Father (he lets the broom fall and wrings his hands)
At night it’s a gruesome and sordid place,
and no child should be there alone.
83
30/4/07 10:03:34
Mother
Don’t say that!
for she’s riding for the Devil,
the black power of darkness and evil!
Mother
Tell me everything.
Father
For many a child has been lost without trace,
where evil itself has its home.
Father
By day the louse plays cat and mouse
in her crispy crunchy choc’late house.
The unwary child is soon beguiled.
The dear old lady, how sweetly she smiled!
But once the child is in, her torments begin.
A helpless child: the plaything of sin.
She is stripped of her clothes
in the oven she goes,
and as the spit turns,
skin blisters and burns.
When she’s tender, nicely toasted
(significantly)
your daughter is roasted!
Mother (surprised)
What evil? Just tell me.
Father (with mysterious emphasis)
The gristle witches!
Mother (starting back)
The gristle witches!
(He picks up the broom again, draws back.)
Well, what’s that to do with a broomstick?
9
Father
Hey, woman! I will come as well
(takes the bottle from the table and runs after her)
To save our poor kids from the jaws of hell!
(The curtain falls quickly.)
10
Gretel (standing up)
My garland’s almost finished.
Look, it’s really quite the best I’ve made.
(She tries to put the garland on Hansel’s head.)
(The curtain rises)
The middle of the forest. In the background is the
‘Ilsenstein’, thickly surrounded by fir trees. On the
right is a large fir tree, under which Gretel is sitting
on a mossy tree trunk, and making a garland of
wild roses. By her side lies a nosegay of flowers.
Amongst the bushes on the left is Hansel, looking for
strawberries. Sunset.
Mother
Every morsel?
11
84
Hansel (comes out swinging his basket joyfully)
Hurrah!
Just look at these berries, the basket’s groaning!
Let that put a stop to my mother’s moaning.
Prelude to Act II
The Witches’ Ride
Act II
Scene 1
Father
The witch will devour her, ev’ry morsel!
Father
Ev’ry morsel!
Little man, who can you be, are you just another
tree?
Did you bring that crimson cloak for me?
He balanced there on one leg and took his nap,
And hid his glassy eye with his black, black cap.
If I woke you, tap, tap, tap, would your little leg
go snap,
Hiding there beneath your black, black cap?
(She holds up the garland of flowers and looks at it
from all sides.)
Hiding there beneath your black, black, cap!
(Runs out of the house.)
Mother
And when she’s been roasted?
Father
The broomstick, the broomstick, you know what
it’s for:
They ride on it, the Witches!
But there’s one, a crone, who lives alone,
with Satan’s eyes and a heart of stone.
At dead of night, when no one’s in sight,
she rides out to vent her hate and spite.
From forest to crag, on her broomstick, the hag
with a fiendish spring makes the death-knell ring.
No children sing in the shade of her wing,
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 84-85
Mother (wringing her hands)
All gone? My children, I’m coming!
I cannot hold on.
Hansel (drawing back roughly)
Boys don’t wear soppy things like that!
That is really a girl’s sort of hat!
( puts the garland on her head )
Now, Gretel, what a lady!
You look good!
I shall make you May Queen of the wood!
Gretel (singing quietly to herself )
A dwarf stood in the forest but never spoke.
He wrapped himself up tight in his red, red
cloak.
Gretel
As I am the May Queen for today,
my page presents the royal bouquet.
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30/4/07 10:03:35
Hansel (gives her the nosegay)
May Queen of the wood, I lay at your feet,
this basket of berries to guard, not to eat!
Hansel
Throw your babies out. I’m first!
Let them starve or die of thirst!
(He gives the basketful of strawberries into her
other hand, at the same time kneeling before her in
homage.)
12
Hansel (pointing with his hand)
Cuckoo, cuckoo, eggs are blue!
(Cuckoo: behind the scenes, heard as if quite in the
distance.)
Hansel (helping himself )
Cuckoo, and you!
(They each try to gain possession of the strawberries.
Hansel wins and puts the whole basket to his mouth
until it is empty.)
Gretel (roguishly)
Cuckoo, cuckoo, berries too!
(takes a strawberry from the basket and pokes it
into Hansel’s mouth: he sucks it as though he were
drinking an egg.)
Gretel (horrified, clasping her hands together)
Hansel, now look what you’ve done,
oh heavens you have scoffed all the berries, you
pig you.
Hansel (springing up)
Ho-ho!
I like that game. Look at me!
(takes some strawberries and lets them fall into
Gretel’s mouth)
Watch how the baby cuckoo grows,
he steals the food from under your nose.
(It begins to grow dark, helping himself again)
Cuckoo, jumps the queue.
86
Gretel
Oh Hansel, we’re bound to come to some harm.
Hansel
Have courage, come, don’t be alarmed.
Gretel
Come, we’d better find more, and quickly.
Gretel (helping herself)
Cuckoo, too true.
Cuckoo, me too!
(Hansel pours a handful of strawberries into his
mouth.)
If you’ve filled your basket full
watch the cuckoo steal them all.
Cuckoo
Cuckoo, Cuckoo.
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 86-87
Hansel (quietly)
Now now, don’t pull that one on me!
Look, Gretel you had your share I can see!
Gretel (does the same)
Cuckoo, gets his due.
13
Hansel
But now it’s too dark, and those brambles are too
prickly.
Of course you could look for all you’re worth…
but now it’s the darkest place on earth.
Gretel
But what are those shimmering columns of light?
Gretel
Oh Hansel, Hansel, we must have been mad.
How could we have both been so stupid and bad?
We wasted our time so carelessly playing.
Gretel
What’s that, that grins in the depths of the
swamp?
Hansel
The silver birch in their robes of white.
Hansel (stammering)
Th-that? That’s just the moon on a willow
stump.
Hansel
Hear what the pine-trees are saying:
Listen to the whisp’ring glade
‘Children, children, tell me, are you not afraid?’
(Hansel looks around uneasily.)
(At last he turns in despair to Gretel.)
Gretel, I think we’ve lost the way.
Gretel (hastily)
There is a face so mean and sly,
I’m sure it winked its evil eye.
Hansel
Watch it.
Gretel (dismayed )
Oh God. Don’t say that.
We’ve lost the way?
Hansel (very loudly)
You mind your own business!
D’you hear? You spy!
Gretel
Just wait till mother hears.
She will thrash you and then there’ll be tears!
Hansel (pretending to be very brave)
I will look after you my dear.
I am a boy, I know no fear.
Gretel (terrified)
Those lights coming nearer they’ll burn in my
hair!
87
30/4/07 10:03:36
Hansel
Fire-flies are gathering in the air.
Gretel, don’t let it frighten you.
Look, it’s clear what we have to do.
to cuddle and to clutch you,
and gently spread my merchandise
of sand in your weary eyes,
at once those heavy eyelids close,
in seconds you begin to doze;
and when you’re deep
and very fast asleep
light shimmers from the Lodestar
to show the angels where you are.
Then they will bring you safely
to the land of dreams.
My dreaming, dreaming children,
such happy seeming children,
linger in the land of dreams!
(A thick mist rises and completely hides the
background.)
Gretel
Now ghostly tongues of mist are sneering.
Look how they’re swirling all round us, jeering!
Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!
Just leave me alone!
(Rushes horror-struck under the tree and fall on her
knees hiding herself behind Hansel)
(crying out) Father! Mother!
(Goes back some steps to the back of then stage and
calls through his hands.)
Voices (in the far distance behind the scenes,
scarcely audible)
Who’s there?
(The children cower together.)
There! There!
(At this moment the mist lifts on the left: a little
grey man is seen with a little sack on his back.)
Gretel (somewhat timidly)
Is someone there?
Voices
There!
Hansel
Ah! Who’s that there?
Hold me tight!
(becoming weaker)
Why is he in the wood at night?
Hansel (half asleep)
Sandman good night.
(The little man approaches the children with
friendly gestures and the children gradually calm
down.)
(They cower down and fold their hands.)
will show me God in Heaven!
(They sink down on the moss and go to sleep with
arms twined round each other.)
(Complete darkness.)
(Here a bright light suddenly breaks through the
mist, which forthwith rolls itself together into the
form of a staircase vanishing in perspective in the
middle of the stage.)
16
Gretel (half asleep)
Let’s say our prayers before we sleep.
(The children shiver together.)
Gretel
Did you hear that?
They answered: ‘There’ Hansel, someone else
understood!
(weeping)
I’m frightened, it scares me; there is bad in the
wood this is where children get lost for good.
Scene 2
The sleep fairy: strewing sand in the children’s eyes.
With a soft, gentle voice.
Hansel
Don’t say that. Come here and hold me tight
I’ll keep you safe all through the night.
14
88
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 88-89
Sandman
I am the little sandman, sh,
A friendly helping hand man, sh,
My dears I’ve come to touch you.
15
Gretel and Hansel
Where each child lays down its head,
fourteen angels guard the bed,
two will stand above me,
two will kneel to love me,
two upon my right hand,
on my left two more stand.
Two will give me warning,
two announce the morning,
two times seven
Scene 3. Pantomime
Fourteen angels, in light floating garments, pass
down the staircase two by two, at intervals, while
it is getting gradually lighter. The angels place
themselves according to the order mentioned in her
evening hymn, around the sleeping children; the first
couple at their heads, the second at their feet, the
third on the right, the fourth on the left; then the
fifth and sixth couples distribute themselves amongst
the other couples so that the circle of angels is
completed. Lastly the seventh couple comes into the
circle, and takes it place as ‘guardian angels’ on each
side of the children. The remaining angels now join
hands and dance a stately dance around the group.
The whole stage is filled with intense light. Whilst
the angels group themselves in a picturesque tableau
the curtain slowly falls.
COMPACT DISC TWO
Act III
The Witch’s House at the Ilsenstein
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30/4/07 10:03:37
The curtain rises.
1
Introduction
3
Scene 1
The same as the end of Act II. The background is
still hidden in mist, which gradually rises during
the following. The angels have vanished. Morning is
breaking. The Dew Fairy steps forward and shakes
dewdrops from a blue-bell over the sleeping children.
2
Dew Fairy
When dew drops on the daisy
the dawn is dim and hazy.
The early birds amaze me
but woe betide the lazy.
Ding! Dong! Ding! Dong!
Each dawn you yawn as my surprise
of sunlight fills your bleary eyes;
a gentle breeze is stirring,
the hum of life is purring,
then up you spring,
reborn in the glory of the morning,
a golden day is dawning.
Wake up you sleepers,
it’s rise and shine.
Rise up and greet the sunshine.
So up you sleepers awake.
Hansel (suddenly jumps up)
Ki-ke-ri-ki! I’m no fool.
Ki-ke-ri-ki! And that’s a rule!
Look, how could I not know that sunrise
happened long ago.
(Hurries off singing. The children being to stir.)
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 90-91
Gretel (rubs her eyes, looks around her, and raises
herself a little, whilst Hansel turns over on the other
side to go to sleep again)
Where am I? Waking, dreaming or dead?
I slept here? On a pine-tree bed!
High in the branches a song-bird is calling.
Down to my bedroom sweet notes are falling.
Of course you rose at the break of day
and now that the sun is up you’re on your way.
You busy songbird. Good to hear you!
(turns to Hansel)
Look there, a lazy lump I call him.
Hansel wake up there.
Ti-re-li-re-li Hansel’s a fool!
Ti-re-li-re-li he’s late for school
The lark is up and ready,
he’s soaring high and heady.
Ti-re-li-re-li, ti-re-li-re-li!
Gretel
We both slept well and what is more
I dreamt a very special dream.
Scene 3
He turns towards the background: at this moment
the last remains of the mist clear away. In place
of the fir-trees is seen the Witch’s House at the
Ilsenstein, shining in the rays of the rising sun.
A little distance off, to the left, is an oven; opposite
this, on the right, a large cage, both joined to the
Witch’s House by a fence of gingerbread figures.
Hansel (meditatively)
Exactly. But what did it mean?
Gretel
I dreamt that distant bells were ringing.
The stars resounded with angels singing.
Clouds that were flooded in rosy light
glowed as they floated in banks through the
night.
Suddenly night is turned to day before me,
earth is blazing with Heaven’s glory.
There’s a golden ladder angels defend it,
Angels in pairs descend it.
They look so bold there with shining wings of
gold.
4
Hansel (surprised)
What is that, a house came out of the ground.
(in the greatest excitement)
As if some magical spring had unwound.
(Both stare at the house spellbound.)
Gretel (gradually regains her self-possession)
It smells so inviting, a gem set in the wood.
Just fancy a night in a house made of food,
with walls to be biting and roofs to be chewed,
all over the icing Mama used to make,
beneath that marzipan cottage a cake,
and then in a pen there are gingerbread men!
Hansel (interrupting her)
Yes, I counted them, fourteen all told.
Hansel and Gretel
Ti-ti-ti-ti ti-re-li-re-li-re-li.
Gretel (astonished)
You also dreamt there were angels here?
Hansel
I feel so good here in the wood
I never slept so soundly before.
Hansel
Right here. They gather round and that way they
disappear.
Gretel (holds Hansel back in astonishment)
Keep still! No sound!
Hansel
A palace, with walls and roofs to be chewed,
the icing Mama used to make,
marzipan cottage, a cake,
and then in a pen there are gingerbread men!
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Gretel and Hansel
A prince’s castle, a gem beyond all price.
A magic parcel of sugar and all things nice.
O prince, we are humble, we ask for your advice,
with hunger we grumble, but your word would
suffice,
and then the starving could stumble towards a
Paradise.
Gretel and Hansel
Come, I/we cannot resist, it’s not to be missed,
the almond icing!
Hansel (resolutely)
Nobody answers. Ooh! The silence is ghoulish.
But why don’t we taste it?
Scene 3
A voice from the house
Greedy little mousey, who’s nibbling at my
housey?
(They go hand in hand towards the back of the
stage; and then steal along cautiously on tip-toe to
the house. After some hesitation Hansel breaks off a
bit of cake from the right hand corner.)
5
Gretel (pulling him back, horrified)
Don’t be so foolish!
Hansel! I’m sure it is meant to deceive.
This food… all for nothing… now don’t be
naïve!
(Hansel starts, and in his fright lets the piece of cake
fall.)
Hansel
Did you hear that?
Hansel
But look, the house, it has such a friendly face.
(enthusiastically)
Ha, the angels meant us to find this place.
Gretel and Hansel (somewhat timidly)
The breeze, just wind in the trees.
Gretel (picks up the piece of cake and tastes it)
Hmm!
Gretel (reflectively)
The angels? Well, perhaps you are right!
Hansel (looking longingly at Gretel)
D’you like it?
Hansel
But Gretel, that’s why we both dreamt of them
last night.
Come, the prospect is far too enticing.
Gretel (lets Hansel bite it)
Come on, it’s your turn!
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CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 92-93
Hansel and Gretel (lay hands on their breasts in
rapture)
Hei!
It tastes so delicious, you have to have some
more.
For we’ve never tasted such Heaven before!
Hansel and Gretel
The breeze, the wind in the trees!
(The upper part of the house-door opens gently, and
the Witch’s head is seen at it. The children at first
do not see her, and go on feasting merrily. Then she
opens the whole door, steals warily up the children,
and throws a rope round the neck of Hansel, who,
without misgivings turns his back to her.)
Hansel
Ha! It’s divine!
Gretel
Like brandy butter!
6
Gretel
Hansel, don’t be so greedy,
remember the poor and the needy!
Hansel (taking another bite)
You be the prig, and I’ll be the pig!
Hansel
So sweet! Rich and crunchy!
Gretel (snatches the piece from his hand)
You should say please, the wind agrees.
Gretel
So crunchy! So sweet!
And round the roof is a choc’late gutter.
Hansel (takes it back from her)
Don’t be a tease, I eat what I sees!
Hansel (calls out)
Hey! Mister baker!
Look out for your roof!
This mouse has got such a sweet little tooth.)
(He breaks a big piece of cake off the wall.)
Gretel and Hansel (laughing)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
The Witch (laughing shrilly)
Hi hi, hi hi, hi hi hi hi hi hi!
Hansel (terrified)
Let go! Who are you?
Let me go!
The voice from the house
Greedy, little mousey, who’s nibbling at my
housey?
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The Witch (drawing the children towards her)
Scrumptious child!
And you my bumptious child!
(She caresses the children.)
You’ve come on a visit? Fancy that!
I love little children, so soft and fat!
There are apple tarts and meringues like snow,
chocolate mousse, Black Forest gateau,
there’s butter, milk, and the cream that’s so good
in your fav’rite, yes I know, it’s rice pudding.
There’s creamy Swiss roll here
and mountains of profiteroles here,
and all as a treat just for you, my sweet,
yes, all for you to eat!
Hansel (makes desperate efforts to free himself )
Who are you? Go away! You’re a freak!
The Witch
Eh?
Hansel
How does this so-called glory appear?
Gretel
Just say ‘no’ to strangers!
The Witch
Well, just remember when it is near
you shut your eyes and forget what you hear.
The Witch
My, my, my, how sly!
My children, I’m trying so hard to be nice,
you’ll find that my house is a Paradise!
(to Hansel )
Come, little mousey come into my housey.
(to Gretel )
You’ll be petted and pampered,
and play all day unhampered.
Hansel (turning roughly away)
Go, ugly mug, go on your way.
(stamping his foot)
Leave us, d’you hear what I say?
The Witch (laughing shrilly)
Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha!
I love to see children all cross and forceful
especially you, the daintiest morsel!
Come, little mousey come into my housey
into the cave of Aladdin;
a place a child could go mad in!
Hansel
Oh, but I use both my ears and my eyes:
then I can tell that you’re telling lies.
(resolutely) Gretel, all that she’s said is a trick.
Now, run away, for God’s sake be quick.
94
(He has in the meantime got out of the rope, and
runs with Gretel to the foreground. Here they are
stopped by the Witch, who casts a spell upon them
both with her magic wand. The stage becomes
gradually darker.)
Now Gretel, you’re the sensible one,
and Hansel has some weight to put on.
We’ll feed him up, I know the diet,
all cream and sugar, that will keep him quiet.
We’ll need some herbs, I know where they grow;
you can’t move at all, as you know.
The Witch
Stop! Hocus pocus, witch’s ground,
makes the victim muscle-bound.
(She grins as she holds up her finger in warning and
goes into the house.)
8
Gretel
Maybe, what will my brother have to do?
The Witch
With you, we two will feed him and fatten him,
those scrawny limbs we’ll tenderly nourish,
his milk-fed body will flourish,
Stand stock still, obey the witch
when she points her hazel switch,
like a stone, don’t even twitch!
(Here the end of her wand begins to glow with
light.)
Hocus pocus, then come jocus;
child, obey, or you are dead,
face the front, march straight ahead,
to the plate where you’ll be fed.
(Fresh gestures: then she leads Hansel, who is gazing
fixedly at the illuminated head, into the stable, and
shuts the lattice door upon him.)
Hokus pokus, boonus jocus, malus locus, hokus
pokus!
Bonus jocus, malus locus!
(The stage gradually becomes lighter, whilst the glow
of the magic head diminishes.)
Hokus pokus, bonus jocus, malus locus, hokus
pokus!
(contentedly to Gretel, who stands there motionless)
Hansel
So speak out loud and not in my ear.
Hansel
I won’t stay here, it’s all just a lie.
Witch
Now, darling, that’s no way to speak!
Children I want you to like me a little.
My name’s Rosina Lickspittle;
when you’re with me there’s nothing to fear,
quite harmless, just a poor old dear.
I’m fond of children, as you will see,
that’s why I love to have (caresses Hansel) them
for tea!
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 94-95
and when he’s plump and half asleep
and docile, and obedient, like a sheep,
then, Hansel, let me speak in your ear,
your moment of greatest glory is here.
7
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30/4/07 10:03:41
and a napkin for a starving wife.
I like things in my kitchen just so:
if not, on a plate with your brother you’ll go!
(She threatens and titters. Gretel hurries off.)
(Hansel pretends to be asleep.)
The helpless booby sleeps like a lamb,
he sleeps as only children can.
When you’ve grown fat as lambkins should
then you’ll be put to sleep for good!
But in the meantime you’re too thin;
with you, my precious, I’ll begin.
Girls are sweeter eaten young,
fit to melt a witch’s tongue.
(She shuts the door and sniffs in it, her face lighted
up by the deep red glare of the fire.)
The dough is made, it’s time to set her braising.
Quick, while the coals in the fire are blazing!
(She pushes a couple more faggots under; the fire
flames up and then dies down again.)
(rubbing her hands with glee.)
Yes, Gretel dear, you’ll fit the fish-kettle, dear!
My, my, aren’t I sly!
Darling, you’ve not had your bun yet,
look in and see if they’re done yet.
When she bends down, bam, shut the door, slam!
Then when I’ve basted her and tasted her,
the rum and the ribs and the brisket
emerge as a gingerbread biscuit.
My magic oven makes flesh into gingerbread
cakes.
My, my, how sly!
Hi, hi, hi hi, hi hi, hi hi hi hi hi!
Gretel (stiff and motionless)
Oh, when she speaks my blood turns to ice.
Hansel (whispering hastily)
Gretel, pst!
Don’t raise your voice.
Be on your guard and try to see
exactly what her plan seems to be.
Pretend to help her with a will
I think she’s coming back, pst! Still!
(The Witch comes out, satisfies herself that Gretel is
standing motionless and then spreads before Hansel
almonds and raisins from a basket.)
The Witch
Look here, you dunce,
and show me your tongue at once.
(sticking a raisin into Hansel’s mouth)
Eat, birdie or you’ll die
in a gristly meat pie!
(She turns to Gretel and disenchants her with a
juniper branch.)
Hocus pocus elder bush!
Free the toes I’ve frozen, husch!
(Gretel moves again.)
Now then, my precious dainty beauty,
high time you did your domestic duty!
Off you go then, nimble maid,
let us see the table laid:
cutlery, crockery, cruet and carving knife,
96
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 96-97
9
10
(In her wild delight she seizes a broomstick and
begins to ride on it.)
So hopp hopp hopp, galopp lopp lopp,
you lazy oaf, be off you sloth.
(She rides excitedly round on the broomstick.)
When up I spring, the bat takes wing,
the hell-cat sings the death knell rings.
(She rides again; Gretel meanwhile is watching at
the window.)
My tongue’s on heat to taste the sweet
and melting treat of children’s meat.
With five and six, the witch will mix,
with seven and eight you lick your plate,
and nine is one and ten is none
so much is nil by witch’s will.
She’ll ride until the night is through.
(Hopping madly along she rides to the back of the
stage, and vanishes for a time behind the cottage.)
(Here the witch becomes visible again; she comes
to the foreground, where she suddenly pulls up and
dismounts.)
Broomstick, huh!
(She hobbles back to the stable and tickles Hansel
with a birch-twig till he awakes.)
Now wake up, it’s time to eat.
Show me your tongue, my sweet!
(Hansel puts his tongue out.)
Yummee scrummee.
(smacks with her tongue)
Stuff your tummy!
(smacks with her tongue again)
Now, you poor little booby-head,
show me your finger instead.
(Hansel pokes out a small bone.)
Look at that! A pin?
Like a matchstick, so thin.
Booby, you’re all skin and bone:
do you not get fed at home?
(calls out)
Gretel!
(Gretel appears at the door.)
Hansel simply must eat some more.
Bring some nuts, there in the store!
(Gretel runs into the house, and returns
immediately with a basket full of almonds and
raisins.)
Gretel
Here are some almonds.
(Whilst the witch is feeding Hansel, Gretel gets
behind her and makes gestures of disenchantment
with the juniper branch.)
(softly)
Hocus pocus elderbush,
free the toe she’s frozen, husch!
The Witch (turning round suddenly)
What did you say, my little goose?
(Hansel stirs himself again.)
Gretel (confusedly)
I said eat up now, there’s no excuse.
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30/4/07 10:03:42
(Gretel hesitates.)
The Witch
Eh?
Hansel (slipping out of the stable)
Don’t succumb, act you’re dumb!
Gretel (louder)
Eat up now, there’s no excuse.
Gretel (making herself our very awkward)
Don’t know how to cook,
don’t know where to look.
The Witch (sticks a raisin into Gretel’s mouth)
Oh what a darling.
You have some too my starling!
Eat, birdie or you’ll die,
in a gristly meat pie!
The Witch
Open that door there, down by the floor there,
bend down and try, easy as pie.
(She opens the oven door; the heat has apparently
diminished. Meanwhile Hansel makes violent signs
to Gretel.)
Hansel (pulling Gretel back by her frock)
Suck your thumb, brain’s gone numb!
Hansel (softly opening the stable door)
Spin a line, play for time!
Gretel (shyly)
Please don’t be cross, I’m at a loss!
You’ll have to show me. I always learn very
slowly.
The Witch (looking greedily at Gretel)
My precious little daughter,
my mouth begins to water!
Come, Gretel dear,
little petal dear.
(Gretel comes towards her.)
Goodness, you’ve not had your bun yet,
look in and see if it’s done yet.
You just bend down, pet,
see if they’re brown yet,
have a good long look,
see if they’re cooked.
The Witch (makes a movement of impatience)
Bend down and try, easy as pie!
(She begins creeping up to the oven muttering all the
time, and just as she is bending over it, Hansel and
Gretel give her a good push, which sends her topping
into it, upon which they quickly shut the door.)
Gretel and Hansel (mocking her)
And when she bends down, bam!
Shut the door, slam!
98
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 98-99
11
they become aware of a troop of children around
them, whose disguise of cakes has fallen from them.)
Then when I have basted her and tasted her.
(Hansel and Gretel fall joyfully into one another’s
arms.)
Hoorah!
Now that the witch is dead
baked to bread we’re out of dread.
Hoorah!
Teach her to boast and brag.
Roast the hag!
Toast the scrawny scrag.
We foiled her on our own, broil the crone!
Boil her down to bone!
(They seize each other’s hands.)
Yes, let us dance to see the flames leap in ecstasy.
Lick round the wicked wotch, quick brown the
wicked witch.
Hip hoorah!
Gretel
Look at the loaves of gingerbread.
Hansel
They are children rising from the dead.
12
Scene 4
Gingerbread Children (motionless and with closed
eyes as the cake figures were before)
The dead arise, but cannot see.
Gretel
They live again, but with blinded eyes.
Can we help you? We long to set you free!
Gingerbread Children
One tender touch will give us back our sight.
(They take each other round the waist and waltz
together, first in front of the stage, and then
gradually in the direction of the witch’s house. When
they get there Hansel breaks loose from Gretel and
rushes into the house, shutting the door after him.
Then from the upper window he throws down
apples, pears, oranges, gilded nuts, and all kinds
of sweetmeats into Gretel’s outstretched apron.
Meanwhile the oven begins crackling loudly, and the
flames burn high. Then there is a loud crash and the
over falls thundering into bits. Hansel and Gretel,
who in their terror let their sweetmeats all fall
down, hurry towards the oven, startled, and stand
there motionless. Their astonishment increases when
Hansel (embarrassed)
It scares me too much, the helpless mite.
Gretel
One touch will fill their eyes with delight.
(She caresses the nearest child, who opens its eyes
and smiles.)
Gingerbread Children
Oh set me free, oh set me free.
I long so much for eyes that see!
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30/4/07 10:03:43
(Gretel goes and caresses all the rest of the children,
who open their eyes and smile, without moving.
Meanwhile Hansel seizes the juniper branch.)
Hansel and Gretel
You angels who guard us with all your might by
day and night,
let us give you thanks for strength to fight for life
and light.
For life and light for strength and sight
give thanks with all your might!
Hansel
Hokus pokus elderbush!
Free the toes she’s frozen, husch!
Now she’s dead, where’s her head?
Baked into a loaf of bread.
(The two boys drag the witch into the cottage.)
Mother
Come my dears.
Father
Life is hard but not all black.
God will pay the wicked back.
When a child cries out in fear.
Someone, somewhere surely has to hear,
for when in need or dark despair
God will surely hear our prayer!
Father
They’re both safe and sound despite our fears!
(joyfully embracing)
(The children jump up and hurry towards Hansel
and Gretel from all sides.)
All
Praise and thanks.
Accept out strength to fight for life and light,
for the glorious gift of sight!
Give thanks to be alive
(They all press round Hansel and Gretel to shake
hands with them.)
Give thanks to be alive,
Give thanks that we survive.
Alive that we may strive,
for life and light, for strength and sight,
give thanks with all your might.
Gingerbread Children
The light, give thanks for sight!
(The children close in a circle round Hansel and
Gretel.)
All
The witch is dead the witch who fed
on noses and toes she had baked into bread.
But safe from harm join arm and arm
and dance away her evil charm.
So dance and swing the prancing ring,
till every living thing shall spring
for joy to greet each rescued girl and boy.
(Meanwhile two of the boys have dragged the witch,
in the form of a big gingerbread cake, out of the
ruins of the oven. At the sight of her they all burst
into a shout of joy. The boys place the with in the
middle of the stage.)
Hansel and Gretel
When in need or dark despair
God will surely hear our prayer!
All
See the witch bewitched for good,
burnt to pitch, she’s ditched for good!
(Whilst the children dance in a joyous circle round
the group, the curtain falls.)
Adelheid Wette, English translation
by David Pountney
Father (behind the scenes)
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la,
would that we knew where our children were!
Ral-la-la-la, ral-la-la-la-la.
(The father appears in the background with the
mother, and stops when he sees the children.)
Look! why there they are!
(Four Gingerbread children at a time surround
Hansel and Gretel, and bow gracefully to them.)
Hansel
The angels showed in a dream they would look
after us,
let their reward be a stream of children’s laughter.
100
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 100-101
13
Final Scene
Gretel and Hansel (running towards them)
Father! Mother!
101
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On session: Diana Montague
On session: Robert Hayward
102
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 102-103
103
30/4/07 10:03:46
On session
From left to right: Sir Peter Moores, Jane Henschel, Rebecca Evans,
Brian Couzens, Sir Charles Mackerras and Ralph Couzens
104
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 104-105
105
30/4/07 10:03:51
The Opera In English Series
CHAN 3011(2)
CHAN 3027(2)
CHAN 3083(2)
CHAN 3017(2)
CHAN 3073
CHAN 3003
CHAN 3004
CHAN 3005(2)
CHAN 3008(2)
CHAN 3070(2)
CHAN 3000(2)
CHAN 3066
CHAN 3086(2)
CHAN 3025(2)
CHAN 3097(2)
CHAN 3074(2)
CHAN 3052(2)
Donizetti: Don Pasquale
Donizetti: The Elixir of Love
Donizetti: Lucia of Lammermoor
Donizetti: Mary Stuart
Janet Baker sings scenes from Mary
Stuart
Leoncavallo: Pagliacci (The Touring
Company)
Mascagni: Cavalleria rusricana
(Rustic Chivalry)
Pagliacci & Cavalleria rusticana
Puccini: La bohème
Puccini: Madam Butterfly
Puccini: Tosca
Jane Eaglen sings Tosca
Puccini: Turandot
Rossini: The Barber of Seville
Rossini: The Thieving Magpie
Verdi: Aida
Verdi: Ernani
Great Operatic Arias
CHAN 3079(2)
CHAN 3116(2)
CHAN 3136(2)
CHAN 3068(2)
CHAN 3030(2)
CHAN 3023(2)
CHAN 3036(2)
CHAN 3067
CHAN 3091(2)
CHAN 3014(3)
CHAN 3089(2)
CHAN 3033(2)
CHAN 3134(2)
CHAN 3130(3)
CHAN 3094(2)
CHAN 3019(3)
CHAN 3072
Verdi: Falstaff
Verdi: A Masked Ball
Verdi: Nabucco
Verdi: Otello
Verdi: Rigoletto
Verdi: La traviata
Verdi: Il trovatore (The Troubadour)
A Verdi Celebration
Bizet: Carmen
Gounod: Faust
Gounod: Faust (abridged)
Massenet: Werther
Poulenc: The Carmelites
Berg: Lulu
Berg: Wozzeck
Handel: Julius Caesar
Janet Baker sings scenes from Julius
Caesar
CHAN 3081(2) Mozart: The Abduction from the
Seraglio
106
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 106-107
CHAN 3057(3)
CHAN 3103(2)
CHAN 3113(3)
CHAN 3121(2)
CHAN 3022
CHAN 3119(2)
CHAN 3054(3)
CHAN 3038(4)
CHAN 3045(4)
CHAN 3060(5)
CHAN 3065(16)
CHAN 3133
CHAN 3101(2)
CHAN 3029(2)
CHAN 3106(2)
CHAN 3138(2)
CHAN 3007
CHAN 3128(2)
CHAN 3042(2)
Mozart: Don Giovanni
Mozart: Idomeneo
Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro
Mozart: The Magic Flute
Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (The
Knight of the Rose, highlights)
Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
Wagner: The Rhinegold
Wagner: The Valkyrie
Wagner: Siegfried
Wagner: Twilight of the Gods
Wagner: Complete Ring Cycle
Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle
Janáček: The Cunning Little Vixen
Janáček: Osud (Fate)
Janáček: Jenůfa
Janáček: The Makropulos Case
Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov
(highlights)
Smetana: The Bartered Bride
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
CHAN 3127
CHAN 3096
CHAN 3035
CHAN 3099
CHAN 3049
CHAN 3142
CHAN 3010
CHAN 3093
CHAN 3112
CHAN 3006
CHAN 3100
CHAN 3088
CHAN 3013
CHAN 3105
CHAN 3085
CHAN 3077
CHAN 3032
CHAN 3044
CHAN 3076
CHAN 3118
CHAN 3078
Christine Brewer
Elizabeth Futral
Yvonne Kenny
Yvonne Kenny 2
Della Jones
Jennifer Larmore
Diana Montague
Diana Montague 2
Barry Banks
Bruce Ford
Bruce Ford 2
Bruce Ford sings Viennese Operetta
Dennis O’Neill
Dennis O’Neill 2
Alan Opie
Andrew Shore
Alastair Miles
John Tomlinson
John Tomlinson 2
Sir Thomas Allen
Baroque Celebration
107
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CHAN 3138(2)
On session: Richard Farnes and Brian Couzens
Also Available
CHAN 3142
On session: Richard Farnes and Brian Couzens
Also Available
108
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 108-109
109
30/4/07 10:03:57
On session: Richard Farnes and Brian Couzens
Also Available
Vocal and language consultant: Ludmilla Andrew
Staging direction: Charles Kilpatrick
Music hired from Welsh National Opera
CHAN 3121(2)
Session photos by Bill Cooper
110
CHAN 3143(2) Book.indd 110-111
Recording producer Brian Couzens
Sound engineer Ralph Couzens
Assistant engineer & Editor Jonathan Cooper
Operas administrator Sue Shortridge
Recording venue Blackheath Halls, London; 22 – 27 November 2006
Front cover Montage by designer
Back cover Photo of Sir Charles Mackerras
Design and typesetting Cassidy Rayne Creative
Booklet editor Kara Reed
Copyright English translation © 1987 David Pountney (updated 2003 Welsh National Opera)
P 2007 Chandos Records Ltd
C 2007 Chandos Records Ltd
111
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CHAN 3143(2)
Printed in the EU
Engelbert Humperdinck (1854 –1921)
LC 7038
DDD
TT 101:08
Recorded in 24-bit/96kHz
Hansel and Gretel
Märchenspiel (fairy-tale) in three acts
Libretto by Adelheid Wette after a fairy-tale
by the Brothers Grimm,
English translation by David Pountney
Hansel
Gretel, his sister
Gertrude, their Mother
Peter, their Father
The Witch
The Dew Fairy
The Sandman
New London Children’s Choir
Philharmonia Orchestra
COMPACT DISC
ONE
TT 58:49
COMPACT DISC
TWO
TT 42:19
p 2007 Chandos Records Ltd c 2007 Chandos Records Ltd
Chandos Records Ltd • Colchester • Essex • England
CHAN 3143(2)
CHANDOS
CHAN 31432) Back Inlay.indd 1
Sir Charles Mackerras
Jennifer Larmore mezzo-soprano
Rebecca Evans soprano
Rosalind Plowright mezzo-soprano
Robert Hayward baritone
Jane Henschel mezzo-soprano
Sarah Tynan soprano
Diana Montague mezzo-soprano
SOLOISTS /PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA/ MACKERRAS
ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK: HANSEL AND GRETEL
CHANDOS DIGITAL
30/4/07 10:10:44