HUMPERDINCK
DVD Hänsel und Gretel Adrian Eröd, Janina Baechle, Daniela Sindram, Ileana Tonca, Michaela Schuster, Annika Gerhards; Vienna State Opera/christian Thielemann; dir. Adrian Noble (Vienna, 2015)
Euroarts DVD: 2072988; Blu-ray: 2072984 113 mins
Astonishingly this performance, from 2015, was one of the first runs of this masterpiece ever to be given at the Staatsoper. That means that the Vienna Philharmonic, which is also the Staatsoper’s orchestra, had never played it before, and when the camera lights (not very often) on the orchestra, you can see how much they are enjoying themselves. A good thing, since I wasn’t getting much pleasure at all, though this is a work I adore and have never previously been bored by. Christian Thielemann, while he periodically wreathes his face in smiles, conducts a performance which stagnates during its opening minutes and never recovers pace. Humperdinck’s score is redolent of Meistersinger and even of Parsifal throughout, but that doesn’t mean that its tempos need ape those of Wagner’s broader passages.
If what was happening onstage were more enjoyable it might be possible to enjoy the languorous tempos more, but Adrian Noble’s production, though traditional at least by the standards of contemporary stagings from the German-speaking world, is annoying. The lovely Overture provides the accompaniment to a mime in which a Victorian family assemble for a slide show organised by Father – mercifully they don’t reappear – and then we see the opera itself, many of the settings two-dimensional, thanks to the magic lantern. Too much of the production is filmed in close-up, which means that the Hansel, played by Daniela Sindram, looks neither
masculine nor young. Ileana Tonca is naturally more plausible as Gretel, but has a mediocre voice. The only singer of distinction is Adrian Eröd as Peter, the father, and his is a small role. Michaela Schuster is an unterrifying witch – that stretch of the opera should be alarming – and Annika Gerhards, doubling as the Sandman and the Dewman, lacks silvery tones, though the scenery at that stage is pretty. Any other video version is preferable to this. Michael Tanner