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This was Humperdinck out of the imagination of ETA Hoffmann, a doomy and psychologically unstable atmosphere where a lot of nightmarish things can happen
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Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel at the Royal Academy of Music (Photo: Craig Fuller)
Somehow or other, I’d never realised I really wanted to see a folk-horror/puritanical-cult/abuse-trauma staging of Hansel and Gretel… well, you live and learn. Though I’m glad I didn’t take my granny or any small children to the Royal Academy Opera’s autumn show, I’m glad I caught Jack Furness’s very well-performed if determinedly freaky take on the old Christmas standby.
The many-layered idea was a sort of coming-of-age for Gretel, whose sinister dreams intersected with reality in far from clear-cut ways. This was Humperdinck out of the imagination of ETA Hoffmann, a doomy and psychologically unstable atmosphere where a lot of nightmarish things can happen. Our two brats reminded me of the siblings of The Turn of the Screw, their childish games barely masking more soigné entertainments.
And this was all done with brilliantly economical theatrical skills – simple set, good use of lights, a well-used chorus of Gretel-doubles, and much power of suggestion, combining to turn expectations of the opera upside down. And it was performed with a lot of intensity, starting in the pit where RAM alumnus Johann Stuckenbruck led the orchestra (in Derek Clark’s reorchestration) through a dramatic and many-coloured reading, from dark turbid threats to a very beautiful refulgence.
Very strong cast, too: Erin O’Rourke’s big-voiced Gretel sounds like the real thing, musical and passionate, and Clover Kayne’s Hansel had something of a young Sarah Connolly about her. Parents Zixin Tang and Alex Bower-Brown were both confident and forceful too, and tenor Zahid Siddiqui’s witch-in-sexy-evening-dress was very intensely done, neither panto-dame nor drag-queen but something much more original and alarming.
If there was something a trifle dour about some of the action, Furness produced terrific passages, the nightfall at the end of Act 1 really notable for the changing atmosphere and transitions between moods.
