Catching up with "Hansel"

Just listened to the Met's broadcast of their new Hansel. I wonder if the children in the audience realized just how well sung this performance was. Alan Held (best Wozzeck I ever heard) was luxury casting as the father, and it was nice to hear the veteran Rosalind Plowright as the mother. Christine Schafer's and Alice Coote's voices blended ravishingly for their prayer. Lisette Oropesa, her sweet voice soaring, nearly stole the show as the Dew Fairy. And while I'm still not convinced that a tenor should sing the Witch, Philip Langridge did not camp it up; he sounded, as he should, ferocious and scary.

Vladimir Jurowski certainly showed why there's so much excitement swirling around him right now. The orchestra sounded lush, and their playing was excellent. Not everyone likes transparency in this kind of music, but I thought the clarity Jurowski brought to the score kept it from getting too schmaltzy--nonetheless, his reading was appropriately mellow and well proportioned. He found nice details in the score, accompanied his singers well, and gave the climactic moments the exact right touch. Most important of all, I had goose bumps continually throughout the afternoon.

Jurowski will lead the Russian National Orchestra in music of Shubert and Brahms at Avery Fisher Hall in February ... I am sure I will try to find a ticket.

Visualizing Hansel

Lorenzo Mattotti gets it: his beautiful, scary, mystery-laden images inspired by Hansel und Gretel are on view at the Gallery Met, which teamed up with New Yorker cartoonists to mount an exhibit in connection with the Met's new production. Mattoti's images capture the story's sense of foreboding, and the wide-angle perspectives make the viewer feel small, childlike, and vulnerable. The New Yorker web site has an online slide show of the drawings and paintings from the exhibit. Edward Koren's and Jules Feiffer's contributions are also atmospheric and not merely decorative, but Mattotti seems to feel about the story the way I do.

A Bad Idea Returns

I received the December Opera News over the weekend, and was reminded by the cover image of Philip Langridge, that once again the Met will be camping up Hansel und Gretel by having the witch played by a tenor. I suppose there are those who find this kind of thing wicked and great fun, but it adds a layer of silliness to an opera that is already misunderstood. It's my firm belief that Hansel und Gretel is not at all for children, that it's beyond their capacities to appreciate. Hansel und Gretel indulges, it is true, in any number of superficially sentimental gestures, from the Sandman and the Fourteen Angels to the wood spirits and so on. But the strategy is one of purposeful regression: it is meant to take us back into the world of our childhood, of primal fears and naive beliefs. Without this tug of memory and nostalgia, the shattering, cathartic finale, in which the lost children are returned to life and to their parents, is ineffective. A drag-queen witch only breaks the spell.

However, one compensation will be the magnificent Christine Schafer, just about the finest Lulu I ever heard, as Gretel. And, as mentioned earlier, a chance to sample Vladimir Jurowski.