Hansel and Gretel: losing their religion
I love the opera “Hansel and Gretel,” by Engelbert Humperdinck (no, not that Humperdinck or this one; this one). His name may be a yuk, but the music he composed is among the masterpieces of opera, soaring and sonorous, tuneful and moving, and altogether delightful.
“Hansel and Gretel” is often performed at Christmastime, being suitable for children. The original German is rarely used in this country, and there are various well-known and well-loved English translations. When I read that the Metropolitan Opera of NY was doing the work this December and January, I thought of going down to see it, because it’s such a favorite of mine even though I haven’t yet got a grandkid to take in tow.
And then I checked out the Met’s website, and watched a video there of the current production. My ears were not offended; the voices, as expected, are great. But I could hardly believe my eyes.
First, in order for you to understand why, let me set the scene, directly following the famous Prayer Song which occurs after the children have discovered themselves lost in the dark and dangerous forest and the Sandman has come to help them sleep by placing sand in their eyes. The German libretto has Gretel then singing that it’s time to say their evening prayers, and the words of the prayer song that follows are very specific in describing a religious image of comfort and protection: fourteen angels will surround the children to guard them from harm while they sleep.
Most stagings—in fact, all stagings I had ever seen until now—follow what are really very clear instructions in the libretto when they set up the scene that directly follows, in which the music of the Prayer Song is expanded, rising and swelling as the children fall asleep with visions of these angels (or perhaps actual angels) guarding them. It’s an exceptionally beautiful and inspirational image.
Well, here we have the Met’s new, improved version (for those unfamiliar with the opera, don’t be surprised at the fact that Hansel is always sung by a woman in drag):
Dream Pantomime from Hansel and Gretel at the Metropolitan Opera from Larry Murray on Vimeo.
The original setting has turned into a Sendak-esque, vaguely threatening scene in which the fourteen angels have become chefs In the Night Kitchen. I believe it’s no accident that the unabashedly religious aspect of the opera has been turned into secular emptiness (although perhaps “emptiness” is not the best word, since this is about food). And this staging is not just wrong (and offensive) because it represents a change from the traditional, or because it’s not religious; it’s wrong because it goes against the fact that the music itself expresses holiness and serenity. One might even say that it’s celestial. So the concept behind the staging goes against the music as well.
In case you want an antidote, here’s the old Met production, before angels feared to tread there. I have kept the Prayer Song because it’s so beautiful, too; it constitutes the first two minutes, and is sung here in an English translation that is inferior to the one I know best, which explicitly describes the fourteen angels and their relative positioning in the tableau, and is also a better rendition of the original German:
Merry Christmas!
[ADDENDUM: For those of you who didn’t follow the link above to “the one I know best,” here it is:
When at night I go to sleep,
Fourteen angels watch do keep.
Two my head are guarding:
Two my feet are guiding:
Two are on my right hand;
Two are on my left hand;
Two who warmly cover;
Two who o’er me hover;
Two to whom ’tis given
To guide my steps to Heaven. ]
If you’re going to do Humperdinck, do Humperdinck. It’s one thing to completely change a setting in an attempt to make something relevant — Hansel and Gretel get lost in the mall — and quite another to take a hatchet and lop off the gripping bits. Child or adult, angels have it all over chefs. Chefs!!
And they didn’t even bring Hansel and Gretel angel food cake.
The ‘reason for the season’ spoils the season.
I have quoted the leaders
I have quoted the leaders of the womens movement from the progressive sex liberating source and yet we can’t give them credit for destroying all the foundations of society as they always said.
When feminist authors wrote heather has two momies and wanted Stalinist state did you really thing the things you loved would remain?
Everything you love HAS to go.
And now it is gone and men can’t bring it back
how would Xmas and traditions survive the end of marraige and family?
Can hand down such if there is no one to hand it to a d it’s illegal and oppressive to do so
duh and double duh
with the pop collapse all that will be erased
you go girls!!!
Without dads there is no family
with family being redefined as local neighbors and no grandchildren there is no tradition
and with the despising of uplifting music art and religion
you and others helped it all go away without realizing what you were doing!!! And negated and marginalized the men who would stop it
cathderals, great music, incredible art, almost all by men
destroyed I favor of women otherwise if corteze don’t burn the ships of culture and history we might go back
it’s too funny
in trying to make a better world women destroyed it for the Fabians to remake it!!!
Can’t have free love and all that and Christian or Jewish traditions
disrespcting yourself your body your family and progeny is incompatible!!!!
Dear Neo-neocon, thank you for enriching my life this Christmas Eve. The loveliness of the scene with the angels!! I know the Prayer Song, in the translation you like, and I love it; but I didn’t realize that the Angels scene would be so beautiful. So sincere.
Sometimes I think of things I have read that say that there are angels who sing God’s praises without ceasing. I wonder what that would sound like.
This truly made my night more beautiful. I will remember the image of the angels at the end of the music, and it will be a comfort!
I often have uplifting experiences when I watch the dance and other art videos you bring to my attention.
Thanks! All the best for the Holidays, Merry Christmas to the Christian flock, and a Happy New Year to us all.
https://www.metoperafamily.org/_uploaded/pdf/pressrelease/hanselandgretelcompleteguide.pdf
The times and sfgate are praising teaching the humanities through rewriting hansel and gretel
Met opera’s ‘Hansel’ is a musical food feast
MIKE SILVERMAN, For The Associated Press
Updated 11:22 a.m., Saturday, December 17, 2011
One thing has long troubled me about the arts, whether visual, musical, or performance; the need to be NEW, to be different. I think this links to the Left’s general mindset. It cheapens and vulgarizes, but it is NEW.
As I listen to my favorite Messiah recording, as I have for forty years, the LP replaced by a CD, I think it is damn hard to do better, more than 250 years later. Durable greatness of creation is incredibly rare. The disrepectful Left is not up to it, so they cheapen, parody, and tarnish in spiteful jealousy.
Adelheid Wette
read the teaching guide and note that it’s a feminist tale of a drunken abusive father and that both parts are played by girls making hansel a metrosexual and more buried in a huge amount of general technical stuff
see
A Postmodernist’s Hansel and Gretel
it would pay to wake
up and pay attention to what’s actually going on
and
And due to apple iPhone and such sucking wind here is where they write out the angels
“Alas! Woe! We are lost!” cried Hansel and Gretel. “Once again, female intuitiveness has failed! So now in the challenge of the hero construct we must wander the forest – fatigued, vulnerable, deprived of all paternal figures for comfort and protection, and great, gnawing hunger (oddly, as we had only just scoffed down the entire contents of a picnic basket).” The siblings traipsed through the forest; bemoaning their misfortune and how surprisingly nature had turned against them when they smelled the greatest smell ever smelt by their intended audience. Sweets! Hansel and Gretel were revived and followed the scent, dashing through the trees until they reached a clearing. And in that clearing, luring the children like Capitalist propaganda, there was a most playful and marketable cottage built of gingerbread and assorted confectionery.
Hansel and Gretel stared up at this symbol of an American Dream House with wide, shining eyes and even wider stomachs, and in that very moment they too strayed from the philanthropic path of protagonists and rejoiced in this great materialistic discovery. Uncaring that this house was an illustration of neglect in nutritional and moral values, they began to break off portions of the gingerbread and sweets and energetically eat. But a conventionally innocuous old woman wearing a black cape appeared at the front door, watching Hansel and Gretel greedily consume her property with a calm curiosity.
Feminist Interpretation of Fairy Tales
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCMQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fuserpages.umbc.edu%2F~korenman%2Fwmst%2Ffairytale_more.html&ei=Dqn2TqTqDcbWrQfQirHRDw&usg=AFQjCNGgeSO6nWqtYxojKe_u2meqkgztWA
and this feminist rewrite:
We’ve all read the story about Hansel and Gretel as children. I, for one, was terrified by it. Mean stepmothers, dark forests, witches with massive ovens that want to cook and eat children?! Perhaps it is fitting, then, that Louise Murphy puts a clever spin on this fairy tale, and weaves it into a fictional and terrifying account of the survival of two Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Go trolling the collectve as they are winning unopposed other than a few older women claiming they don’t represent them
as if that has any meaning beyond their own ears
this is a post modernist matriarchy get used to it
they won
though beating up people who loved u and wanted to do what u want was no real trick
opposing the new masters
that will be different as we all know how much women play a role on actual communist states or Islam!!
They don’t
and they will be surprised
and will whine to be saved to people who aren’t there and generally don’t care
and will not give them a voice but for show
such is politics of despotism!!!!!!
Enjoy ur beds
This is vandalism-the director has to “express himself”,to show he is an”artist”at the expense of the work. What bothers me is that people passively accept this.
@ Artfldgr:
I had to stop reading when I hit this nonsense:
“Opera, unlike almost all other art forms, was invented.”
These people are in Red’s immortal words: Dumb-asses!
There were 14 comments, one for each angel, but artfldgr counts as 7 of them.
And what did u contribute jdwel? Showing off a grade school level of math and what else?
Anything about why? Who? Any kind of contribution of substance?