Hansel and Gretel + Engelbert and Adelheid + Jacob and Wilhelm = Opera Magic
by Michael Clive
It took three pairs of siblings to create Hansel and Gretel, one of the most beloved of all fairy-tale operas. Engelbert Humperdinck and his sister Adelheid Wetter were the composer-librettist team, while a certain Jacob and Wilhelm—whom we know as the Brothers Grimm—transcribed the story of siblings Hansel and Gretel, who were stranded and hungry in the forest overnight. Jacob and Wilhelm added literary flair and deep linguistic scholarship to folk tradition, giving posterity a rather severe morality tale (albeit with a happy ending). Adelheid’s scenario brightens the darkness, keeping the original’s life-lessons intact. But the most important of the half-dozen siblings, of course, are the opera’s doughty, delightful title characters, who have a thing or two to teach us.
Hansel and Gretel is not just kids’ stuff: The lushly tuneful score, which mixes folk melodies with Humperdinck’s most inspired arias and orchestral writing, made this opera a smash hit with demanding German music enthusiasts and critics, as well as children, from the moment it opened—two days before Christmas 1893 in Weimar. Since then its popularity has never flagged; it grew to become a yuletide tradition with many opera companies, and today is composer Engelbert Humperdinck’s sole claim to fame.
Humperdinck was 36 when he began work on Hansel and Gretel. Born in the German town of Siegburg in 1854, he started piano lessons and proved his talents early on, producing his first compositions when he was seven, and then two musical plays at age 13. Though his parents tried to steer him away from music and toward architecture as a vocation, he enrolled at the Cologne Conservatory in 1872. In 1876, a scholarship enabled him to study with the esteemed pedagogues Franz Lechner and Josef Rheinberger, and in 1879 the Mendelssohn Foundation in Berlin awarded him the first Mendelssohn Prize. Further awards permitted travels in Italy, France, and Spain—the kind of cultural touring considered foundational for 19th-century European composers.
After meeting Richard Wagner on his travels, Humperdinck became the master’s protégé, assisting him at Bayreuth and serving as music tutor to his son Siegfried. (Wagner was 21 years older than Humperdinck.) Their close association is evident in Humperdinck’s music and would have been a serious credential for any young composer of that time. Humperdinck went on to teach at conservatories in Barcelona and Frankfurt.
It’s interesting to note that the German Humperdinck, like the Frenchman Camille Saint-Saëns, lived until 1921, when musical modernism was painfully coming into existence. Both composers brought the sound of the 19th century into the 20th and looked backward toward Romanticism, not ahead to tonal experiments. Though we can hear Wagner’s imprint on Humperdinck’s style, we do not hear Wagner’s modernity. Like Wagner, Humperdinck employs thematic motifs, but Hansel and Gretel hews to the tradition of set-pieces in the form of melodious songs and ensembles with familiar structure. In contrast with Wagner’s operas, Humperdinck’s music never leaves themes and harmonies unresolved.
Still, Humperdinck’s intricate craftsmanship and dense, layered handling of a large orchestra are masterful in Hansel and Gretel, and his scoring takes full advantage of Wagner’s orchestral expansionism. The opera’s melodies, of course, are irresistibly charming, and there are probably enough of them for two or three hit operas. Humperdinck produced other choral and orchestral works that were successful during his lifetime, but today he is known almost entirely as the composer of Hansel and Gretel.
The premiere of Hansel and Gretel was conducted by Richard Strauss, already a successful composer himself and soon to become the foremost composer of German-language operas. In 1923, Hansel and Gretel became the first opera to be broadcast from London’s Royal Opera House; eight years later it became the first opera to be broadcast live from The Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Trending Now
Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel
