That may be one of the most awkward titles the site’s ever come up with but there’s no great way to say “hey, I just got back from The Opera” without really saying “Hey, I want you to think I’m pretentious and take my lunch money.” The Metropolitan Opera is an amazing experience, but since most people don’t live in New York–I was as surprised as you, I had to check census figures–they can’t experience it. And since most people can’t experience something–and wouldn’t even if they could–just mentioning it is a one way ticket to being called a snob.
Anyway, I saw that the union behind the Opera’s performers was thinking of going on strike this week because apparently even those in “snotty” professions like opera can’t make ends meet and so Hansel and Gretel might be one of the last productions put on for a while. I thought I’d at least pay respect to the craft of the Met and everything its productions stand for by reviewing quite possibly one of the last operas to take place there this season. [Adding to my suspicion that the Met doesn’t really want tourists to attend its operas is the fact that their season seems to end in April, right before the summer when most tourists come to New York to see operas or–more likely–say they want to see it and not get around to it.]
Hansel and Gretel would seem to lend itself to opera quite well. It has all the basic elements one would think about for an Opera: 1. A well known story that won’t require too much plotting to set up. 2. A straightforward narrative that won’t confuse audiences of any age (most operas seem to be children getting drug by their parents, their parents who pretend to like opera more than they do, and very senior citizens who fall asleep before the children do). 3. It’s fantastical, fairy tale setting gives a great excuse to use trippy puppets and costumes. 4. It’s already very dramatic as the children could be eaten by a witch who pretends to like them. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I might suspect those closet-opera queens, The Brothers Grimm, of originally cooking up Hansel and Gretel just so it could be an opera hundreds of years later.
And Humperdink’s Hansel and Gretel didn’t disappoint. From the moment it begins, you feel yourself sucked into a surreal world that feels like the painting Norman Rockwell and Salvador Dali never collaborated on. The children wear white clothes in a dingy white house while starving to death, but something is slightly off, slightly askew on the stage which feels wholly one-dimensional with three dimensional people crawling around it. By the time the children set off through terrifying woods that grab out at them (performers in suits with tree heads) and someone known as “The Sandman” crawls onto the front of the stage, it feels like you’ve fallen through a child’s nightmare. And all of this is before we’ve met the witch.
The opera felt great to this first timer precisely because this particular opera didn’t feel like the first time I’d been. Hansel and Gretel–with its dire beginning, scary middle section, evil villain, and bright ending–felt like one of those great Disney cartoons they made before children turned into complete pussies. [I love Pixar but we all know the “villains” in their movies would get eaten for breakfast by the evil witches and queens from the old Disney movies.] By the time the glorious buffet table was laid for Hansel and Gretel by a waiter with a fish head, I was transported. It’s the kind of thing you wished movies did more often, and can still be found on the opera stage, eight times a week, whenever the Met re-opens from this strike.
NICE