Partly cautionary tale, morality play and coming of age story, Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel has charmed adults and children alike since its premiere just before Christmas 1893. The opera is based on the fairytale ‘Babes in the Wood’ by the Brothers Grimm but adapted to a more family friendly libretto by Humperdinck’s sister Adelheid Wette. Originally written as folk songs to entertain her children it gradually morphed into a full blown opera which married traditional folk tunes with contemporary musical styles and motifs. The work was an instant success and received great praise from such composers as Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. A wonderfully captivating drama expressed through beautiful and memorable music which has continued to attract old and young alike.

Engelbert Humperdinck and his sister Adelheid Wette.

Hansel and Gretel are left to do the housework while their parents are away. Mother returns to find the children idling with no work done. They have spent all their time playing and dancing. Annoyed she sends them to the forest to collect berries as there is no food in the house. Father returns from the market buoyed by a good day selling his brooms. He asked where the children were. When he hears that mother has sent them to the woods as punishment he gets very worried. There’s a witch that lives in the woods and children have got lost there and have never been seen again.

The story of Hansel & Gretel has entered our popular culture through book, films & illustrations.

Now deep and lost in the woods the children get very frightened as night falls. The Sandman appears and lulls them to sleep and as they sleep angels descend from the heavens to guard them. Woken by the Dew Fairy in the morning the children see a gingerbread cottage. They go inside and realise it is the house of a witch who intends to fatten them up, cook and eat them. The children eventually trick the witch into looking into her flaming oven and both children push her into it. The oven opens and the children the witch has kidnapped and turned into gingerbread come back to life and are freed. Mother and father appear and everyone dances and celebrates, and they all live happily ever after… I imagine.

Irish National Opera’s production moves a story which was originally set in the forests of Germany to a rather dark and run down hotel with flashing neon lights where a silent night watchman observes the story as it unfolds. The Irish National Opera Ensemble who entered one by one wearing party hats played on stage and were conducted from the piano by Richard Pierson.

The set was a two tire affair which, like the recent production of ‘Griselda’, essentially doubled the stage space. Dark and a touch claustrophobic it echoed the mood of the original setting of the opera and although updated the production stuck very closely to the original opera in mood and feel. Originally written in German this production was sung in English with surtitles each side of the stage.

Left – Raphaela Mangan, Miriam Murphy, Ben McAteer & Amy Ní Fhearraigh & (Right) – Raphaela Mangan (top) Carolyn Dobbin, Amy Ní Fhearraigh & Raymond Keane.

Both Raphaela Mangan and Amy Ní Fhearraigh gave strong and joyful performances as the siblings Hansel and Gretel. They easily and convincingly adopted the youthful mannerisms of their characters. Mangan’s Hansel with his boyish bravado & bluster, Ní Fhearraigh’s Gretel her juvenile dancing and rhymes. Both sung their parts with confidence and clarity with Ní Fhearraigh getting the lion’s share of the virtuoso singing. Her vocal skill and precision was obvious on some of the opera’s highpoint like ‘Little brother dance with me’, and ‘A dwarf stood in the forest’.

Miriam Murphy was a splendidly distraught and stressed Mother with a strong and articulate vocal and character performance. Baritone Ben McAteer’s deep and resonant voice gradually filled the theatre as he made his off stage entrance to ‘Far-la-la-la’ in Act I. A deep and resonant singer with great volume and precision. Carolyn Dobbin was quite spectacular as the Witch. The Act III ‘Now Gretel, you’re the sensible one’ and ‘Now wake up, it’s time to eat’ were a singing and acting tour de force from Dobbin.

Plenty to eat… including the children! Amy Ní Fhearraigh & Raphaela Mangan.

Emma Nash was the Dew Fairy and although a small part with only one real singing opportunity she gave a solid and confident performance while Raymond Keane as the silent Watchman was an interesting addition to the production. Obviously a seasoned actor with a very expressive manner he facilities and witnesses the action from start to finish, almost as a silent observer like the audience itself.

Quite a large number of younger people made up the audience of the almost full house at Solstice Arts Centre in Navan. A slight concern about mobile phones, crunching crisps and rustling sweet wrappers proved unfounded. All were glued to the action on stage. Produced with Theatre Lovett who have a long tradition of children theatre, this was an enjoyable and entertaining production. A wonderful mix of fairytale and highest quality singing and acting. Yet another fabulous production by the team at Irish National Opera.

Vagabones is Raymond Deane’s fourth opera. ‘The Poet and his Double’ and ‘The Wall of Cloud’ were both shorter chamber pieces. These were followed by the full length work ‘The Alma Fetish’ which takes the tempestuous affair between painter Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler as its subject. Vagabones is based on the play Trespasses by Emma Donoghue with a libretto by Renate Debrun. It reimagines events that occurred in Youghal, Co. Cork in 1661. Florence Newton, an elderly woman who has fallen on hard times is accused of bewitching Mary Longdon the maid of prominent local gentleman John Pyne. The opera is set during Newton’s imprisonment awaiting trial and we learn of the events which have lead to her incarceration.

Composer Raymond Deane and Emma Donoghue, author of ‘Trespasses’ on which Vagabones is based.

Raymond Deane, who’s work I am not familiar with aside from listening to some pieces online before attending this performance, is an Irish composer who studied for a time under Karlheinz Stockhausen and is probably best known for his piece ’Seachanges’ which has been on the Leaving Certificate music syllabus for some years.

The rather small attendance at An Táin Arts Centre were greeted by a stage set that was quite bleak consisting of a dark back wall onto which was occasionally projected explanations of the unfolding scenes. This worked quite well but conversely a video screen displaying various images in the middle of the wall didn’t. The images didn’t seem to relate to the action on stage and using a video screen jarred with what was otherwise a very cohesive period set. 

The cast with conductor Sinéad Hayes, composer Raymond Deane and members of Crash Ensemble.

The music was provided by Crash Ensemble, a group specialising in contemporary music,  under the baton of Sinéad Hayes. The 13 musicians included an accordion and a harp in a possible nod to the Irish context of the story and a percussionist surrounded by a large array of drums and chimes. (this set a mildly concerning tone before the opera even started). An issue which often surfaces when larger ensembles perform in smaller regional venues soon made its presence felt. The voices on stage being drowned out by the sheer volume from musicians sitting right in front of the audience over which performers had to sing. 

(I have been to a number of venues, e.g. the Samuel Beckett Theatre, where the musicians are placed behind the performers or upstage which in smaller venues alleviates this problem but some venues cannot accommodate this setup and it limits the type of backdrop a stage set can have)

Rory Musgrave as the Mayor and Carolyn Holt as Florence Newton.

I didn’t in all honesty warm to the music. I’m not a big fan of dissonance and the lack of harmony and beauty in a lot of modern orchestral music. I found Deane’s music very angular, prodding and percussive with very few passages that could be called attractive in a melodic or harmonic sense. The music was undoubtedly very expressive and certainly captured ones attention but to my ears it tended to the unappealing, repetitive and quite mathematical. Not the sort of music I could imagine listening to on its own. It was also problematic that some of the loudest and most percussive passages coincided with and overpowered the accompanying singing. Voice and music fought with each other for dramatic prominence. At times it was hard to hear anything the performers were singing at all. 

This leads me onto another issue. Although sung in English the possible lack of knowledge of the story among the audience and the competition at times between voice and music should have necessitated surtitles. This is not a criticism of this particular opera per se as I have been to numerous operas sung in English and it is the nature of the sometimes rather ‘unnatural’ metre of singing conversational dialogue and the pitch it is often sung at that can make it quite difficult to understand. Surtitles would have been a great advantage. 

Kelli-Ann Masterson, Fionn Ó hAlmhain, Sarah Power & Ross Scanlon.

The highlight of this opera was without doubt the singing. The vocal quality on show was superb in both skill and range. All members of the cast were impressive with particular standouts for me being Carolyn Holt as Florence Newton, a strong, energetic and vibrant mezzo with a great stage presence. Ross Scanlon was a forceful and articulate John Pyne exuding the confidence of his role in presence & voice and Rory Dunne was very much in his character as the healer Valentine Greatrakes. Sarah Power as Mary Langdon had great vocal range but on occasion was a bit thin in the upper registers, Kelli-Ann Masterson again was very articulate and comfortable on stage as was Rory Musgrave as the often conflicted Mayor of Youghal. Vocal performances all round were very impressive and held the attention even though many of the musical passages were quite flat, lacked variety and were accompanied by an almost sung recitative style.

Rory Dunne, Carolyn Holt & Rory Musgrave.

The story of Vagabones touches on issues of suspicion, fear and mistrust through the lens of the differences between a native community and the colonial community which lives among them. It exposes the tensions that exist when two different identities share the same space and the unfortunate consequences this can have. It did seem to present men in a rather bad light, the only redeeming male character (Dónal O’Dare) being played by a female and the possibly devious & dishonest behaviour of a female character (Mary Longdon) being the result of coercion or fear of rejection by men. A narrative that has certain cultural currency at the moment.

The evening was certainly educational and intriguing with outstanding singing but the music wasn’t to my taste and this certainly compromised my enjoyment. But it is still nonetheless wonderful to see new Irish operas being written and to witness  the singing and performing talent Ireland currently has. 

Opera Collective Ireland’s website is here

Crash Ensemble’s website is here

Looking back through the lens of today it’s hard to appreciate just how revolutionary the operatic innovations of Christoph Willibald Gluck and his librettist Ranieri de’ Calzabigi were for audiences in the late 18th century. There were established rules and norms about what opera should be about and how it should be presented. It was a fairly locked down formula and deviating from it was not only creatively perilous but also risked courting the displeasure of the royalty & nobility who funded the whole operatic endeavour. In a nutshell being too radical could mean failure and poverty.

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck and Ranieri de’ Calzabigi. The architects of ‘Reform Opera’.

It was in this atmosphere that Gluck, an established and quite successful composer decided to embark on a project we now call his reform operas. Starting off with Orfeo ed Euridice in 1862 a series of highly successful operas retooled the operatic workshop and set in motion a sea change in operatic themes and presentation. They set about stripping opera of its unnecessary ornamentation, virtuoso adornments, excessive passages and dance scenes all of which they believed hindered the telling of the story. A refocusing on the reality of the drama and the most effective and fluid telling of that story became the priority. To instate a ‘Nobel Simplicity’ as de’ Calzabigi called it.

Orpheus and Eurydice by Edward Poynter.

The story of Orfeo and his wife Euridice is a well-known one from Greek mythology. Orfeo who can thrill man and beast alike with his music finds the body of his beloved wife Euridice and laments her death. Even the gods are overcome by the beauty and sadness of his music so they allow him to go to the underworld to bring her back to earth (what a comment on the power of music). The only condition is that he can not look at or speak to her. After again charming the gate keepers of hades with his music he leads his beloved back to life but on the way she looses heart because he will not look at or speak to her. His resolve weakened and wanting to console and reassure her he turns to look at her and she again dies before him. But true to form as he sings one of the most beautiful arias in opera over her body the gods again relent and restore her to life ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ (What shall I do without Euridice). I know what you’re thinking, an opera with a happy ending!

Janet Baker sings ‘Che farò senza Euridice’

This was a concert performance in St. Peters church in Drogheda so no costumes, no sets, no acting and as relating to this opera in particular, no dancing. Mezzo Soprano Sharon Carty was engaging and in full voice as Orfeo and Soprano Sarah Power an excellent Euridice. Emma Nash took the part of Amore and the wonderful acoustics in the church did the voices of the main characters and the chorus proud. The Irish Baroque orchestra conducted from the harpsichord by Peter Whelan gave an enthusiastic and solid performance.

This was a stripped down version of a fully staged and choreographed production Irish National Opera are touring at the moment with United Fall dance company. Despite the fact that the singing and playing were wonderful I don’t really think a concert setting of this full opera worked all that well. Most operatic concert performances will be a selection of pieces possibly built round a theme, many of which the audience may already know or a full opera which is semi-staged with costume and some contextual setting. A classical work like this, even though it is not overly long at 1.5 hours, being sung in Italian with no staging robbed it of too much context and entertainment for it to be successful. It was a bit of a marathon to have no accompanying drama and indeed no interval. Having said that it was wonderful to have this seminal work from the operatic canon performed in Drogheda by such talented musicians and singers.