Prelude to Hansel und Gretel
In the years following the death of Richard Wagner, a sort of Wagner-mania gripped Europe’s most ambitious composers. In France, Russia, Germany and even Britain, they turned out countless lengthy operas under the spell of the Master. They had all the right ingredients; symbolic plots, mythical heroes, battles and mystical love stories, all wrapped up with the "Wagnerian" musical trademarks – loud climaxes, leitmotifs and tortuous chromaticism. Until the arrival of the Italian verismo operas in the last years of the 19th century it really did look as if the future of opera was to be endless re-heatings of what was thought to be the Wagner recipe.
How many of these operas survive in repertoire today? Exactly one – not an epic myth or love-drama, but a setting of a children’s fairy tale. Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel is, on the face of it, the least Wagnerian opera imaginable. It began life as no more than a children’s play with simple music, and even as a finished opera retained a simple, poetic plot. The music requires no more than a standard orchestra; the tunes are fresh and simple. Yet it has survived in the repertoire for the reason that its composer understood Wagner better than any other imitator. He certainly had the best possible credentials; he knew Wagner personally and worked as his assistant on the first production of Parsifal, in 1882. Wagner clearly respected Humperdinck’s musicianship; he even permitted him to compose a few extra bars of that lofty work, to cover a scene change! And Hansel und Gretel shows us why. Humperdinck understood Wagner intimately enough to appreciate what the Master’s most fanatical adherents completely missed – that Wagner’s most powerful music is his quietest, that his most expressive motifs are his simplest, and, above all, that he knew when to stop! The result is an opera that is, in its own way, perfect – tuneful, expressive, and glowing throughout with true Wagnerian magic. The finest musicians of the day immediately recognized this apparently modest opera as a masterpiece; Richard Strauss conducted the première in 1893, and it has been a popular favourite ever since.
The Vorspiel, or Prelude to Hansel und Gretel (like Wagner, Humperdinck was a fiercely patriotic German and preferred not to use the French term "Overture"!) is an affectionate homage to Wagner’s Tannhauser overture. Wagner begins with quiet horns playing the Pilgrims’ Hymn; Humperdinck begins with quiet horns playing Hansel and Gretel’s Evening Prayer. Wagner’s hymn returns in state at the end of the overture; so does Humperdinck’s prayer. But it is nonetheless an inspired touch; evoking the hushed magic of a woodland evening with the simplest of methods. The Prayer builds to a broad climax, dies away again, and the main section of the Prelude commences with a lively fanfare, the motif, in the opera, with which the witch’s spell is broken. Humperdinck works through the main motifs of the opera in sonata-style, making much use of the Dew-Fairy’s motif, a tender, singing melody for strings, and a playful mock-baroque cadence figure which accompanies the celebrations at the end of the opera. The various themes are worked together to a climax in the best Wagnerian Meistersinger manner; and the Prelude fades to a gentle close with a radiant sunset-coda – a passage of the highest poetry. Humperdinck understood that operatic redemption did not need gods or tragic lovers – he found it in the peaceful sleep of two children in a woodland evening.
Richard Bratby 1999
Copyright Classical Notes.co.uk 2000
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