Hansel and Gretel in Brisbane

What a fabulous night.

I'm just back from Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, a student production at the Queensland Conservatorium, directed by Michael Gow and conducted by Johannes Fritzsch. How blessed these students are to be working on this glorious score with two great artists. And the design by recent NIDA grad Charles Davis is worthy of any opera house. Great to see the Con devoting significant resources to what must be a priceless learning experience for the students involved, in the pit and on the stage. 

I love this opera. I've known every note for 25 years, and it's a score that keeps on giving. It's a miraculous synthesis of German folkiness and Wagnerian complexity. Humperdinck was a student of Wagner's - he assisted at the premiere of Parsifal, and even wrote a bar or two for a tricky scene transition. Hansel and Gretel, completed in 1893, with a libretto by his sister who urged on the project, is full of Wagner - the climaxes, leitmotifs, and thick chromaticisms. Richard Strauss conducted the premiere in Weimar, then Mahler conducted the Hamburg premiere in the following year. Not bad. Within a year of its premiere, the opera had been performed in more than 70 theatres.

The dramatic construction is immaculate. It flows beautifully, while allowing for some great set pieces. But it's an incredibly difficult sing - the father in this story needs to be pretty much Wotan - and it doesn't give up.

This production delivers. Sure, student singers cannot ever be expected to deliver the full goods with a score like this, but they do a mighty job, singing their hearts out across a big orchestra, and clearly relishing every moment. This story of hunger, kidnapping, cannibalism and witch burning seems right up their alley.

Go see it. You have until Friday.