‘Hansel and Gretel' a satisfyingly simple performance
November 20, 2009 | By Andrew Adler | aadler@courier-journal.comConsider what would happen if Hansel and Gretel, those pesky tykes from fairytale land, lived in what we like to call the real world:
Parents who routinely beat their offspring and send them out by themselves into a dangerous forest to forage for food — cue Child Protective Services. Children making brooms but not attending school? Call in the Office of Truancy and Delinquency Prevention. A witch who plies her victims with brandy-oozing chocolates and copious doses of candied house — bring on Alcoholics Anonymous and the wrath of the American Dental Association.
Happily, instead of participating in the general breakdown of social order, this brother and sister can content themselves with occupying the center of Engelbert Humperdinck's 1892 opera. It is a slender work, but for a sufficient number of listeners a beloved one. And it's worth reviving every so often as a reminder that simple things can offer satisfyingly simple pleasures.
Kentucky Opera chose “Hansel and Gretel” to close the company's fall 2009 season at the Brown Theatre. Friday night's opening performance was reasonably well-managed, enlivened principally by the prancing, full throated comic splendor of Victoria Livengood's Witch. Cavorting about the Brown stage as though channeling a weird amalgam of Margaret Hamilton and Phyllis Diller, Livengood didn't need a broomstick to keep the mayhem at high-fever intensity.
Because the witch and her gingerbread house don't appear until well into Act Two, you must wade through a certain level of forced preliminary levity between the siblings. Humperdinck provides a surprisingly rich orchestral backdrop, at times sounding a bit like Wagner lite, but the shenanigans wear thin in a hurry. One felt that David Roth — the company's general director and the stage director for this production — was creating bits of business simply to keep his singer/actors on the move.
He does succeed in one crucial element: creating and sustaining the illusion that adult performers are playfully innocent children. This suspension of disbelief is necessary for the opera to persuade in any real sense, and here Roth and his colleagues display requisite care.
I particularly enjoyed Leah Wool's Hansel, a trouser role that brought out this young mezzo's delightful impetuousness. Anya Matanovic's Gretel was more conventionally wrought, and her singing, though strong, could not escape hints of shrillness above the staff. Both artists sang Humperdinck's celebrated bedtime prayer quite lusciously.
Megan McCauley sighed and scolded with proper weariness as Mother, with Jonathan Stinson's Father tra-la-la-ing with all appropriate ringing gusto. The production's fantasy sequences, particularly the procession of Angels toward the end of Act One, were affectingly integrated into the total design scheme (which originated at Calgary Opera).
Steven White conducted the Louisville Orchestra in rather plain fashion. There were too many instances, as well, when individual musicians did not respond with the technical security needed for Humperdinck's score to make its best impression. They will have plenty of time to prepare for Kentucky Operas' 2010 season, which opens Sept. 24 and 26 back at the Brown with the double-bill of Mascagni's “Cavalleria Rusticana” and Leoncavallo's “I Pagliacci.”
“Hansel and Gretel” closes Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Brown.
