The disaster has already happened. The tired mother is sitting at the table, holding the broken jug in her hands. Then the father returns from the market. He’s drunk again, which just makes things worse. In a rage, the mother has already chased her children, Hänsel and Gretel, into the woods to pick berries. But the witch is already lying in wait. She lures the children into her gingerbread house. Gretel has to work for her and Hansel is imprisoned. Hansel and Gretel are clever and shrewd, and they stop the witch’s evilness. She is finished off through her own evil methods. The children are free now and find the way home to their parents.

The German composer Engelbert Humperdinck wrote his first opera, Hansel and Gretel, in 1892, and it was considered by many as his personal way of freeing himself from the overpowering influence of Richard Wagner. Within one year, the work had already been performed at over fifty opera houses around Europe. Today it is still very popular, and is often performed in the weeks before Christmas. The story is after the famous fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm, the opera’s lovely melodies are well known around the world.

The Salzburg Marionette Theatre created a fascinating, heart-warming production with renowned singers and highly skilled puppeteers including some tongue-in-cheek tributes to Wagner: there’s a Wagner portrait on the wall in the parents’ hut, the gingerbread house is in the shape of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth and the witch sometimes looks suspiciously like Wagner.

With the collaboration of Naxos