Gingerbread Nightmare

Perhaps the most overtly festive thing about Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel comes in the final act when the Knusperhexe describes the materials used to build her house, an inventory of almonds, raisins, marzipan and gingerbread that is, for a Christmastime audience, basically just a list of everything we’ve eaten in the past twenty-four hours. Yet despite its un-Christmassy setting, the opera has become, in Germany at least, a staple of the holiday season and a reliable seat-filler to be wheeled out each December along with Die Zauberflöte and La Bohème. 

The Staatsoper Berlin, whose newly refurbished house on Unter den Linden enjoyed a week of re-opening celebrations in October before closing again for another two months of finishing touches, returned at last to active service with a wonderfully odd new production of…