#humperdinck hansel and gretel

[mask131]

A trivia not many people know about: the Humperdinck opera of "Hansel and Gretel" is NOT based on the story by the brothers Grimm.

While, yes, the "Hansel and Gretel" story most well-known and famous today is the version given to us by the Grimm, there was actually another collector and writer of fairytales who was much more successful and more well-known than the Grimms back in the 19th century Germany. It was Ludwig Bechstein, who published a collection of fairytales a few decades after the Grimms released theirs - and he immediately overshadowed them in German literature. The German children of the 19th century were more aware of the Bechstein tales than the Grimm's.

And in his collection Bechstein wrote several fairytales that were alternative versions of the Grimms - including his own version of "Hansel and Gretel". The Humperdinck opera is not an adaptation of the brothers Grimm story - but of Bechstein's own take on the fairytale. You notice this due to a lot of small details in the opera that can be found only in Bechstein's version of the tale, not the Grimm's version.

[princesssarisa]

Opera on Youtube 4

L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love)

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 1967 (Carlo Bergonzi, Renata Scotto; conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni; no subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1981 (Luciano Pavarotti, Judith Blegen; conducted by Nicola Rescigno; Spanish subtitles) – Part I, Part II

Metropolitan Opera, 1991 (Luciano Pavarotti, Kathleen Battle; conducted by James Levine; English subtitles) – Part I, Part II

Vienna State Opera, 2005 (Rolando Villazón, Anna Netrebko; conducted by Alfred Eschwé; English subtitles)

Theatro da Paz, Brazil, 2013 (Atalla Ayan, Carmen Monarcha; conducted by Emiliano Patarra; Brazilian Portuguese subtitles)

Teatro Manoel, Malta, 2015 (Cliff Zammit Stevens, Shoushik Barsoumian; conducted by Philip Walsh; English subtitles)

Vienna State Opera, 2017 (Dmitry Korchak, Olga Peretyatko; conducted by Marco Armiliato; no subtitles) – Part I, Part II

Ópera de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2017 (Ramón Vargas, Olivia Gorra; conducted by Guido Maria Guida; Spanish subtitles)

Vienna State Opera, 2018 (Benjamin Bernheim, Andrea Carroll; conducted by Frédéric Chaslin; no subtitles)

San Francisco Opera, 2023 (Pene Pati, Slávka Zámečníková; conducted by Ramón Tebar; English subtitles)

Hänsel & Gretel

Vittorio Cottafavi studio film, 1957 (Fiorenza Cossotto, Jan Poleri; conducted by Nino Sanzogno; sung in Italian with Italian subtitles)

August Everding studio film, 1981 (Brigitte Fassbaender, Edita Gruberova; conducted by Georg Solti; English subtitles)

Leipzig Opera, 1981 (Annelott Damm, Steffi Ullmann; conducted by Horst Gurgel; no subtitles)

Julliard Opera Center, 1997 (Jennifer Marquette, Sari Gruber; conducted by Randall Behr; English subtitles)

Opera Australia, 1992 (Suzanne Johnston, Christine Douglas; conducted by Johannes Fritzsch; sung in English)

Vienna State Opera, 2015 (Daniel Sindram, Ileana Tonca; conducted by Christian Thielmann; English subtitles)

Pacific Northwest Opera, 2015 (Sylvia Szadovszki, Ksenia Popova; conducted by Clinton Smith; sung in English with English subtitles)

Scottish Opera, 2020 (Kitty Whately, Rhian Lois; conducted by David Parry; sung in English with English subtitles)

Eklund Opera Program, 2020 (Christine Lee, Anna Whiteway; conducted by Nicholas Carthy; sung in English with English subtitles)

Amarillo Opera, 2021 (Sarah Beckham-Turner, Patricia Westley; conducted by Carolyn Watson; English subtitles)

Turandot

Mario Lanfranchi studio film, 1958 (Lucilla Udovick, Franco Corelli; conducted by Fernando Previtali; English subtitles)

Vienna State Opera, 1983 (Eva Marton, José Carreras; conducted by Lorin Maazel; no subtitles)

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 1986 (Gwyneth Jones, Franco Bonisolli; conducted by Jacques Delacote; English subtitles)

Forbidden City, Beijing, 1998 (Giovanna Casolla, Sergej Larin; conducted by Zubin Mehta; no subtitles)

Teatro alla Scala; 2001 (Alessandra Marc, Nicola Martinucci; conducted by Georges Prêtre; French subtitles)

Gran Teatre del Liceu, 2009 (Anna Shafajinskaia, Fabio Armiliato; conducted by Giuliano Carella; English subtitles)

Chorégies d'Orange 2012 (Lise Lindstrom, Roberto Alagna; conducted by Michel Plasson; French subtitles)

Wichita Grand Opera, 2015 (Zvetelina Vassileva, Ricardo Tamura; conducted by Martin Mazik; no subtitles)

Teatro de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2017 (Gabriela Georgieva, Carlos Galván; conducted by Enrique Patrón de Rueda; Spanish subtitles)

Opera Hong Kong, 2018 (Oksana Dyka, Alfred Kim; conducted by Paolo Olmi; English subtitles)

Eugene Onegin

Prince Regent Theatre, Munich, 1965 (Hermann Prey, Ingeborg Bremert; conducted by Joseph Keilberth; sung in German; no subtitles)

Paris Opera, 1982 (Benjamin Luxon, Galina Vishnevskaya; conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich; French subtitles)

Kirov Opera, 1984 (Sergei Leiferkus, Tatiana Novikova; conducted by Yuri Temirkanov; English subtitles)

Chicago Lyric Opera, 1985 (Wolfgang Brendel, Mirella Freni; conducted by Bruno Bartoletti; Spanish subtitles)

Petr Weigl film, 1988 (Michal Docolomanský dubbed by Bernd Weikl, Magda Vásáryová dubbed by Teresa Kubiak; conducted by Georg Solti; English subtitles)

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, 1998 (Vladimir Glushchak, Orla Boylan; conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky; English subtitles) – Act I, Act II, Act III

Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Valencia, 2011 (Artur Rucinski, Kristine Opolais; conducted by Omer Meir Wellber; no subtitles) – Part I, Part II

Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 2014 (Artur Rucinski, Amanda Echalaz; conducted by Aziz Shokhakimov; English subtitles)

Mariinsky Theatre, 2015 (Andrei Bondarenko, Yekaterina Goncharova; conducted by Valery Gergiev; French subtitles)

Livermore Valley Opera, 2019 (Morgan Smith, Antonina Chehovska; conducted by Alex Katsman; English subtitles)

[adarkrainbow]

Your post on Bechstein's "Hansel and Gretel" makes me think Humperdinck's opera must have been inspired more by that version than by the Grimms'. The opera also features a desperate mother instead of a wicked stepmother and has both parents happily reunite with the children in the end. It also has the Witch urge Gretel to look in the oven to "see if the gingerbread is brown yet" rather than to "feel if it's hot enough," and has Gretel be warned of the Witch's real intent (in the opera by Hansel) rather than guessing it herself.

Well if there are these elements, yes, the opera is DEFINITIVELY based on Bechstein's fairytale rather than the Grimm's.

Though ultimately we can say that the Grimm are still down there in the end, because Bechstein wasn't just aware of the Grimm as his direct predecessors - he was literaly inspired by them and when he originally wrote his versions of their fairytales (such as "Hansel and Gretel" here), it was mostly as an "answer"/expansion/continuation of the Grimm's own tales, so to speak. I think I said it before but the first editions of the brothers Grimm fairytales were not meant for your "average audience" - they were scholarly, "scientific" editions mostly aimed at folklorists and linguists and people who were interested in German culture. The brothers only realized people bought their book as an entertainment afterward, and then decided to re-edit and modify their book to become a more "regular" fairytale book.

Meanwhile, Bechstein directly aimed at writing a book that could be read by parents to their children, or casually enjoyed by the average reader not interested in small obscure nonsensical folktales - which not only explains the aim of his rewritings, but also why his book had an immediate success in Germany that overshadowed the Grimms, and why the Grimm's tales had to take their time to "build" themselves as the dominant "fairytales for children".

So yes, very likely the opera is based on Bechstein's version, especially since as I said Bechstein's tales were more well-known than the Grimms in Germany itself for quite some time (and we can still see this in a lot of German media which takes elements from Bechstein's variations rather than the Grimm's takes).

[That being said I do want to precise a little detail with Bechstein - I think twenty or so years after the publication of his fairytale collection, he ended up editing his book thoroughly. And what he did was add a bunch of new tales not originally present, but more importantly remove a good deal of others. And those removed tales included those that were too similar/overlapped too much with the Grimms. For example, I got my hands on a recent French translation of Bechstein's fairytales, complete and all, but the problem is that it is based on the later editions, so tales like "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Red Riding Hood" are absent, and merely listed in appendices as tales that were cut from the book - so I had to go check them online to have the text. Might also explain why today we tend to forget they exist.]

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

free opera streaming!!! FREE OPERA STREAMING!!!

[opera-ghosts]

102 years ago today, the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) died. His opera “Hansel and Gretel” is still one of the most popular operas and for many children it is their first encounter with the world of opera. On this colored postcard from 1895 we see the composer's children, which the card publisher has with Humperdinck's permission was allowed to publish.

[meydia]

13 Nov 2022 | Day 6/∞: Hansel & Gretel at the Met Opera (2008) - Engelbert Humperdinck

[paul-archibald]

Fairy tales

Fairy tales have stimulated generations of composers to write some of their finest music. With a rich source of characters that includes dragons, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, monsters, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches and wizards, it’s no wonder these stories have captivated the imaginations of compsers and audiences alike. Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921)Hansel…

[a-book-of-creatures]

Art by Maurice Sendak for the 1997 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel at the Houston Grand Opera. Sendak also did the set design for the production.

[photoblogdujour]

Daffodil Humperdinck conducting her opera where Scrooge runs for city council and enables legislation to support single parent families so that Hansel and Gretel need never chop wood in the forest, never get lost, and never meet the Gingerbread House Witch. Because of urban renewal, the Gingerbread House is torn down and a coffee shop with a drive through is built in its place. The name of the coffee shop? Gingerbread House.

[ariel-seagull-wings]

OC INFO PROFILE: NOEMI AND MIRIAM SPENGLER

@bixiebeet @spengnitzed @professorlehnsherr-almashy @theselfshippingwitch @amalthea9 @slimerspengler @janeb984 @inevitablemoment

FULL NAME: Noemi Adina Melnitz Spengler and Miriam Sarai Melnitz Spengler.

NICKNAME(S): Nomi and Miri.

FACECLAIM: The twins Drusilla and Minerva from the cartoon The Garfield Show (both voiced by Laura Summer), Madeline and Chloe from the cartoon Madeline, Tommy Picles and Chuckie Finster from the cartoon Rugrats.

BIRTHDAY: September 06th 1988.

ZODIAC SIGN: Virgo.

SEXUALITY: The only thing they know is that they think two adults kissing is gross.

GENDER: Assigned female at birth (just because their parents it was more easy than calling them "the babies" or "it", but they made sure that the girls can change their gender identity when they're older).

OCCUPATION: Playing and studying.

BIRTHPLACE: Upper East Side, Manhattan, New York City.

LIVE IN: Tribeca, Manhattan, New York City.

NATIONALITY: US Americans.

FAMILY:

Egon Spengler (father)

Janine Melnitz (mother)

Nathan Spengler (grandfather)

Ruth Spengler (grandmother)

Elon Spengler (uncle)

Cyrus Spengler (great uncle)

Joseph 'Joe' Melnitz (grandfather

Miriana 'Mimi' Melnitz (grandmother)

Bella Melnitz (great aunt)

Sabine Melnitz Banner (aunt)

Cait Banner (cousin)

Victor Banner (cousin)

CHARACTERISTICS: Both are playful, hyperactive, caring and protective. Noemi is thoughtful towards the needs of others, optimistic, confident, intelligent, courageous, compassionate, hard working and very persistent, possessing good detective skills and acting as a leader in times of need.��While Miriam is pessimistic and easily scared, shy and reserved, but loyal and brave, capable of facing her fears briefly to come through her friends and give them emotional support. They can also both be short-tempered and sometimes act stubborn, specially when they were babies.

LIKES: Playing with puppets, building houses and clothers for their dolls, watching cartoons, singing, helping their father in his lab, drawing, imitate their mother on the reception phone, cooking alongside Slimer.

DISLIKES: When grown ups try to force decisions upon them ( instead of asking for their opinions) and also act smug and talk down in a condescending way to them for being small children, and don't admit right away to not knowing the answer for their questions.

WEAPON OF CHOICE:

Flashlight

Walkie talkie

PKE Meter

Ghost Trap

OTHER PERSONAL INFO:

Noemi wears green framed glasses and purple hair clips in half up pigtails, and has a hair fringe, while Miriam wears red framed glasses and blue hair clips in high pigtails and has no hair fringe.

Surprisingly, both turned their heads down when Janine reached the ninth month of pregnancy, so their mother decided to have them born in a natural birth instead of a C-section.

As babies, they tought Slimer was a toy, and even bite him. They were only playing, and didn't meant harm, but it took time till Slimer understood that and became one of the girls best friends. Meanwhile, their uncle Peter was just amused of seeing the spud being tortured by the two babies.

They are huge opera geeks ever since their parents took them to watch Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel for the first time.

NAME ANALYSIS:

Noemi: pleasantness

Adina: delicate

Miriam: bitter

Sarai: princess

Melnitz: steward

Spengler: metal worker

[theatrenews]

ICYMI: Englebert Humperdinck’s enchanting Hansel and Gretel returns to The Royal Opera at Christmas - #ROHHanselandGretel #royaloperahouse @RoyalOperaHouse #ROH #RoyalOpera #theroyaloperahouse #theroyalballet http://dlvr.it/TFlksx

[princesssarisa]

Coming up next in Sleeping Beauty Spring:

We're going back in time to 1902, for another opera version of the tale. I didn't review it earlier because I had no translation of the libretto on hand until now.

Dornröschen, by Engelbert Humperdinck – not the British pop singer whose real name is Arnold Dorsey, but the man whose name he borrowed as his stage name, the German composer best known for his operatic version of Hansel & Gretel.

By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if in their research for their animated Sleeping Beauty, Walt Disney and his filmmakers discovered this opera. First of all, the evil fairy Dämonia is a much more prominent, Maleficent-like villain throughout the story than in any other early adaptation I've found so far, and she ultimately battles the Prince and is killed by his sword through her heart. Secondly, in a minor detail, one of the good fairies is named Flora.

[princesssarisa]

After reading Bechstein’s version, I have two things to say.

First of all, I think Engelbert Humperdinck's opera is clearly based more on Bechstein's version than on the Grimms', which makes sense if Bechstein's was the more popular in Germany at the time. These are the reasons why:

Like Bechstein's version, instead of a wicked stepmother, the opera has a desperate mother who just can't bear to see her children starving, and has both parents joyfully reunite with the children in the end. (Although the opera bowdlerizes the story to cut the "child abandonment" plot line – instead the Mother's frayed nerves just make her lose her temper over unfinished chores and a spilled jug of milk, and she sends the children into the forest to pick berries with the threat of a thrashing if they come home without a full basket, which leads to their accidentally getting lost.)

Bechstein has Hansel and Gretel say an evening prayer before they go to sleep in the Witch's house – the opera's Evening Prayer is its most famous musical highlight, although there, it's sung in the forest the night before they find the Witch's house.

Both Bechstein's version and the opera's libretto describe the Witch's house as roofed with pancakes, rather than with "cakes" as in the Grimms' version.

Both versions have the Witch urge Gretel to look inside the oven to see if the bread (or gingerbread) that's baking inside is brown yet. In the Grimms' version, she hasn't put the dough inside yet, and urges Gretel to crawl in to feel if it's hot enough.

In both versions, Gretel is warned that the Witch plans to roast her in the oven, rather than figuring it out herself. In Bechstein's version, the white bird warns her, while in the opera, Hansel warns her, having overheard the Witch plotting it earlier.

It's also clear that Paul O. Zelinsky's famous picture book of the fairy tale is based just as much on Bechstein's version as the Grimm's.

As in Bechstein (and the Grimms' first edition), "the woman" is Hansel and Gretel's own mother instead of a stepmother, although she's portrayed a bit more villainously than the mother in Bechstein, and as in the Grimms' version she dies in the end.

Again, the roof of the Witch's house is made of pancakes.

Again, the Witch already has bread in the oven in the climactic scene, and she urges Gretel to sit on the breadboard so she can push her in to see if the bread has turned golden brown yet. But Gretel tricks the Witch into sitting on the board instead and pushes her in. There's no breadboard in the Grimms' version of the scene (or the opera's for that matter).

Do you know if you can find an English translation of the Ludwig Bechstein version of "Hansel and Gretel" anywhere?

Yes! And it is very easy to do so because there is a website that posted all of Bechstein's tales translated in English. It is "worldoftales.com", and the Hansel and Gretel story can be found here, and at the bottom of the page there is a link to the other tales of Bechstein.

[entertainmehub]

Theatre-News.com Englebert Humperdinck’s enchanting Hansel and Gretel returns to The Royal Opera at Christmas - #ROHHanselandGretel #royaloperahouse @RoyalOperaHouse #ROH #RoyalOpera #theroyaloperahouse #theroyalballet http://dlvr.it/TFjW7j

[opera-ghosts]

December 23. 1893 the first performance from “Hänsel und Gretel” by Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921). Here we see a original castlist from a performance in 1912 at The Metropolitan Opera. Take a closer look on the singers lifes. The Postcard is from 1900.

[meydia]

🎭 HANSEL & GRETEL (2008)

13 Nov 2022 | Day 6/∞: Hansel & Gretel (2008) - Met Opera Trigger warnings: cannibalism, murder, burning, near-suicide attempt, possible Holocaust implications

An operatic fairytale told in 3 kitchens. Set in a timeless, modern age, hunger is at the core of this narrative - hunger for food, hunger for the flesh of children, and hunger for vengeance. Surrealistic in design, one feels as though they are experiencing a fever dream brought on and punctuated by hunger pangs. Set designer John McFarlane's scenic paintings are reminiscent of Francis Bacon's screaming popes in their visual cruelty, and wow, I might be having nightmares tonight.

Hansel and Gretel have never been so oddly delirious, casually cruel and careless, yet incredibly childlike and naïve. They play, ignore their chores, and Hansel sneaks licks of cream. In a deviation from the original story, Hansel and Gretel's mother is not evil - she instead mistakenly sends them out in a fit of anger, yet goes with their father to find them. They pass out in the woods and entertain dreams of a fanciful feast, waited upon by a humanoid fish. Upon waking, entranced by a cake carried on a lolling tongue, they enter the witch's house - the industrial basement of a cannibalistic old woman.

Throughout, though, what is most striking is the undercurrent of the possibility of and enacting of violence. Hansel and Gretel's mother pushes them about in anger and desperation when she finds that they have not done their chores. She takes out a bottle of pills and, completely hopeless, nearly overdoses before their father comes in with a bag full of food. Banished from the house and playing with berries in the woods, delirious with hunger, Hansel and Gretel begin to smear the red juice upon themselves, reminiscent of blood.

In perhaps the most striking and horrific ending, the children shove the witch into the oven - and Gretel smears a cream moustache upon Hansel's upper lip, a perfect Hitler moustache. Take a moment here to consider a few things: one, that the classic take on witches is anti-Semitic in origin, particularly their 'large noses'; two, that the witch has been burning children up and eating them for no clear reason; three, that witches are seen as horrific and live out in the woods, othered by society; four, that the oven converts human flesh into gingerbread, and the very last scene is of children rejoicing as Hansel and Gretel prepare to take bites out of the witch's appendages.

Who is who specifically is unclear - are Hansel and Gretel Hitlerian youth, poor and made to believe in ideology that the Jews are stealing all their money? Is the witch the Holocaust itself, cooking and eating innocent children in a room eerily reminiscent of a gas chamber? Does the cycle of violence continue - do Hansel and Gretel gain a taste for human flesh, put through the oven?

What kind of hunger are we talking about here? Hunger for violence, perhaps. A kind of hunger that creates more hunger.