December 5 & 8, 2021
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, GA
Donald Runnicles, conductor; Kelley O’Connor (Hansel); Jacquelyn Stucker (Gretel); Elizabeth Bishop (Witch); Stephen Powell (Father); Melody Moore (Mother); Meechot Marrero (Sandman/Dew Fairy).
HUMPERDINCK: Hansel and Gretel
Mark Gresham | 7 DEC 2021
The late sci-fi/fantasy author Ray Bradbury used to say that “Good theater can be done in your living room.” True enough, depending on how you do it. The same can apply to the apron of a concert stage like that of Symphony Hall, when a full symphony orchestra takes up most of the stage behind the proscenium, as with Sunday’s performance of Englebert Humperdink’s opera, Hansel and Gretel by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, led by principal guest conductor Sir Donald Runnicles.
Add a narrow platform and include the conductor’s podium right in the middle of it, and you create either an obstacle or a potential tool for minimalized theater. The attention becomes focused visually on small details of the players’ position and physical gesture, especially facial expression, hopefully enhancing the aural experience of the music rather than distracting from it.
You don’t get the same kind of impact of full-blown theater as you should with a fully staged opera, but then, when deployed as a concert version, you have to make those compromises. It requires of the audience a little more imagination, even with a more Christian-moralized version of a folk fairy tale such as Hansel and Gretel brings to the stage, versus the less “safe space” versions offered by the Brothers Grimm or their antecedent tellers of the tale.
Gingerbread has long been associated with Christmas, but it was the version by the Brothers Grimm that caused the baking gingerbread houses, which soared in popularity in the 19th century thanks to the story’s notorious witch’s cottage.
Humperdink wrote his opera Hansel and Gretel in the final years of the Victorian Era. No wonder it is less grim than the Grimm version; more polite and moralizing. Like the gingerbread houses, it became closely allied with Christmas. No wonder, too, that in English-speaking countries, it is usually sung in English, as it was on Sunday afternoon, with added supertitles for good measure, just in case.
Soprano Jacquelyn Stucker, who portrayed Gretel, had just sung Richard Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder (“Four Last Songs”) with Runnicles and the ASO on Thursday and Saturday. Mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor sang the trouser role of Hansel (literally, in black jacket and trousers, versus Stucker’s elegantly flowing dress that in no way would have survived tromping through an actual forest. In their staged action, they both portrayed a degree of sibling affection and playfulness that far exceeded what one would typically expect of, say, nine-year-olds. Perhaps their Hansel and Gretel were younger than that.
Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Bishop portrayed the Nibbling Witch not so much as an old crone but as a wickedly flamboyant auntie. You know the type: the one with the bowl on the coffee table full of candy, stuck together in one big lump, that has sat there uneaten for years.
The rest of the cast lent good support in their roles: Soprano Melody Moore (as a late replacement for mezzo Michaela Martens) sang Mother, alternatively worrying and chiding, capably countered by baritone Stephen Powell as a concerned but less fretful Father. Meechot Marrero played the double roles of the Sandman and the Dew Fairy, affording the story some “good fairy” old magic for dusk, and morning respectively.
The children, released from their spells at the end, were sung by the Midtown High School Treble Chorus (Kevin Hill, dir.) from behind the orchestra. It was just enough volume to give their singing a ghostly, almost otherworldly quality (metaphysical conundrums aside about to where they were released once Hansel broke the spell).
Runnicles led the entire in a buoyant and comfortable if rather traditional performance without any groundbreaking innovations or insights. But then, it is the season where together tradition and magic still mostly rule — including gingerbread. ■
Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. he began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.
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