Hansel & Gretel (Complete Opera in English)

Editor's Choice - Gramophone Magazine September 2007

Grammy 2008 Award Winner - Best Opera Recording

"After 40-odd years, this is the English Hansel to have. Simply unmissable for any fans of this opera, Anglophone or not, Mackerras balances the songful and the sinister with absolute sureness. There is not a weak link in the cast, with Rebecca Evans in particular showing how her voice has bloomed in recent years. Jane Henschel is a frighteningly credible witch: she could be your smiling next-door neighbour." (Gramophone)

"It was Rebecca Evans's Gretel, who took the honours. Spinning out radiant lines of delicious purity, she made it hard to see how the role could be sung better"
The Times

'Drawing on her long CV of menacing roles, Henschel's witch was the complete package… only the hardened purists could have resisted her charms.'
The Times

"A fine introductory version, in Pountney's ghoulish and very free translation."
(BBC Music Opera Choice of the Month August 2007)

The well-contrasted pairing of Jennifer Larmore and Rebecca Evans in the title roles allows each to prove why they are among the most accomplished singers of our time
An all-star cast performs Humperdinck's most famous opera, Hansel and Gretel, in English. It is sometimes asked whether Hansel and Gretel is really an opera for children or an opera for adults. The answer, of course, is that it is for both. Children will enjoy its straightforward songs and singing games, its rampaging comic-grotesque witch with her monstrous eating habits, and its supernatural apparitions. But then the child in us all probably enjoys this!

It is a bitter-sweet fairytale of threatened innocence and vanquished evil, written with a delicious mixture of folk melodies and Wagnerian techniques. In addition, adults will probably relish Humperdinck's rich orchestration and subtle harmony, his consistently strong melodic invention and his masterly counterpoint, and his amazing variety of mood and texture. It is an opera for everybody.

The recording brings together three wonderful singers who first performed this opera together at the 2004 BBC Proms to high acclaim. Jennifer Larmore reprises her role, in English, of Hansel (a role she has previously recorded in the German language) with Rebecca Evan as Gretel and Jane Henschel as the Witch. They are conducted this time by Sir Charles Mackerras who brings his own remarkable magic touch to the proceedings.

Truly a gingerbread confection of a recording, involving some of opera's brightest stars, and demonstrating why this opera is a permanent presence in the operatic repertoire.