'Having spent my career hitherto largely in Germany, it is a particular pleasure to begin my tenure as Head of RAO with this opera, a work which incorporates so many aspects of the German Romantic tradition. This piece, musically, is highly indebted to Wagner – how could it not be, when Humperdinck himself was at Wagner’s side during the gestation of his final opera, Parsifal, in 1882? It would appear that Humperdinck even wrote extra music for the first production to accommodate a scene change!
'A mere eleven years separate the first performances of Parsifal from the Weimar premiere of Hänsel und Gretel, which was conducted by Richard Strauss, and it is extraordinary how the Wagnerian idiom is suffused by Humperdinck, gently but unmistakably, into the musical fabric of Hänsel. One can point for example to the harmonic stasis of the opening of scene 1 (Rheingold), the Hoi-o-to-ho-ing of Mother in scene 2 (Walküre), or the evocation of the rustling of the forest (Siegfried). None of these are ‘quotations’ as such, rather nods to the world which Humperdinck inhabited – as much a fairytale world, after all, as that of Hänsel. Overall, the warmth and subtle orchestral skill of the score moved the eminent Wagnerian Hans Knappertsbusch to describe Hänsel und Gretel as ‘a little branch on the tree of the Mastersingers’ (ein Zweiglein am Baum der Meistersinger), which to me sums up the influence of Wagner’s most humane score on Humperdinck’s most famous opera. While student singers are by and large not ready for the challenges of Wagner himself, it is a joy to be able to mount this work, which is highly unusual in its synthesis of Wagner’s stylistic inheritance with the avoidance of neurosis.
'That is not to say, of course, that the music and text do not take us to anxious places. The dangers of the dark wood, the fear of that which is ‘other’ and the questioning of the family dynamic are all essential tropes of German Romanticism. Lines such as ‘do you know what the wood is saying to us?’ (weisst du, was der Wald jetzt spricht?) sum up this spirit with enviable precision and even profundity. Yet this is one of these rare operas which appeal and delight on many levels. Occasionally maligned for sentimentality, Hänsel is in fact a work that contains multitudes, which can be enjoyed by young and old alike and offers a glimpse for our young artists into the hypnotic world of German Romanticism.'