Hansel and Gretel, Royal Opera House review ★★★★★

The Royal Opera House’s production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel suits opera-lovers who respond to novel reinterpretations of beloved operas with the anguished cry, 'Why don’t they just follow the composer’s original stage directions?' The designer of this production, Antony McDonald, also serves as the director, his traditional design definitely taking precedence.

The curtain rises on a pretty-as-a-postcard front cloth of a cottage in an Alpine setting. During the overture (luxuriantly played by the Royal Opera Orchestra under conductor Mark Wrigglesworth), the cottage behind the front cloth is illuminated twice, once to show Hansel and Gretel and their parents enjoying times of plenty, once to show bare shelves and the Mother missing a meal so the children could eat. It's an uncomfortable reminder, despite the fairy-tale decor, of contemporary Britain.

In the second of two casts, Polish mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp and Australian soprano Lauren Fagan both sing beautifully as Hansel and Gretel respectively. These are credible children – big sister Fagan bossy but sympathetic, Hipp a bundle of boyish energy.

Darren Jeffery and Harriet Williams as the parents. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Harriet Williams (replacing Susan Bickley) is a sympathetic presence as the Mother who, driven to the end of her tether by hunger and a feckless husband (Darren Jeffery), accidentally breaks their last jug of milk and then blames it on the children, ordering them into the woods at dusk to collect berries. McDonald’s set for the woods would grace any children’s book of fairy tales, fallen tree trunks and leafless branches creating just the right blend of mystery and unease.

The scene where the frightened children say their prayers and snuggle together for protection in the dark wood is one of the most beautiful in all opera, Humperdinck, a disciple of Wagner, writing the most glorious orchestral purple passage that Wagner never wrote. At this point, McDonald does diverge from the original stage directions, which call for a staircase from heaven to appear and for 14 angels to descend to guard the children while they sleep.

Are angels thought too old-fashioned for a modern secular society? McDonald seems to think so and replaces them with characters from other fairy-tales – Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf – which makes us feel that we’ve wandered out of Humperdinck’s opera and into Sondheim's Into the Woods. As these characters, dressed in Disney-esque costumes, gathered around the children, the effect is twee rather than the transcendent moment demanded by Humperdinck’s music. I want angels!

Sarah Dufresne as the Dew Fairy. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Surviving their night in the woods, the children wake to encounter the Witch’s gingerbread house which McDonald depicts as Bates Motel from Psycho. American mezzo-soprano Tichina Vaughn, making her ROH debut, delivers a storming performance as the Witch, strongly sung and even more strongly portrayed, gleefully amoral as she fattens Hansel for future consumption. The children, of course, have other plans...

Throughout, the hero of the evening is the Royal Opera Orchestra, strings and brass especially playing with burnished warmth, while Wrigglesworth’s baton sets tempi which, appropriately for a fairy-tale opera, are neither too fast, nor too slow, but just right.

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Hansel and Gretel is sung in English, with English surtitles. Further performances are on 24, 30, 31 Dec, 6 and 7 Jan. Click here to book