Review: Hansel & Gretel, Glyndebourne
SEVERAL hundred of the richest people in the country watched two starving children venture out into the woods to pick wild strawberries so their family could eat.
But after this dark opening scene, the atmosphere brightened and Sunday's first night audience greeted the young cast of Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel with shouts, stamps, cheers and curtain call after curtain call. By the time conductor Robin Ticciati called his instrumentalists to their feet for the umpteenth time, most London Philharmonic Orchestra members had packed and gone home.
This was an evening full of incident, humour, zinging colour, shock and delight. A subtle and deep but entry level opera which even dispelled the ennui of jaded corporate guests.
Humperdinck first conceived Hansel and Gretel as a play to be performed by his nephews and nieces as a birthday present for their father but was so excited by the results he turned it into a fairy-tale opera.
The tale is well-known – children are lost in the forest, find a 'gingerbread house' where a witch fattens up Hansel to eat, she falls into the oven herself and the family is reunited.
Here Glyndebourne parts company with a picturesque pine forest, quaint cottage and pointy-hatted witch.
The forest is a post-apocalyptic wasteland of jagged stumps decorated with plastic bags and empty bottles.
The sandman – dressed in silver – descends through the stage like Bond villain Baron Samedi; the dew fairy wears a sexy transparent pacamac and high crystal shoes; the dream children's' dance has overtones of a Nazi youth rally with all-white costumes and slicked back hair.
But star of the night was Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as the witch who said: "Putting on the make-up takes an hour-and-a-half and you need another 30 minutes to get into the costume which weights about ten kilos." With his massive fat-suit, lace bra, wig and jewellery, he won hysterical cheers and boos from the audience more reminiscent of a Palladium panto than high opera.
Hansel and Gretel, Alice Coote and Lydia Teuscher respectively, lived, breathed and cavorted their childlike roles while singing with expressive phrasing, eloquence and bell-like tone.
But sets and lighting battle with divas to take centre stage at Glyndebourne.
The children's home has giant sheets of reinforced cardboard as walls.
The gingerbread house is a ziggurat of supermarket shelves laden with coloured goodies. Sections slide out to reveal a battery of chef's steel knives, a shop till or an oven while blackened chimneys spell the sinister fate that awaits the fattened children (pupils from Ashdown House school who all sing and act beautifully.)
At the end of course the children escape and all is well. If only goodness was rewarded with the same generosity in real life. But do buy your ticket and go along – it could well be so.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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