#engleberthumperdinck

[costumersupportdept]

#backstagelife #stealthsequin #knittinginpublic #engleberthumperdinck #hanselandgretel

[kennyotto]

Holiday sleeve face... vinyl selfies at the coast! #sleeveface #vinyl #engleberthumperdinck #keepportlandweird #thriftstorefinds (at City of Rockaway Beach)

[maturegems]

TODAY from our "Birthday Vault" from the world of music and entertainment we say a Happy Birthday to three remarkable legendary icons: Englebert Humperdinck; Lou Gramm; and Isla St.Clair #engleberthumperdinck #islastclair #lougamm #singer #music #entertainment #television #music #icons #legends Celebrating birthdays of legendary icons.....

[agallahfaro]

#agallahhumperdinck @roxxidott on the 1 and 2 finding flips #engleberthumperdinck

[operandesign]

Why Engelbert Humperdinck is the perfect Xmas music. No, seriously

What operas can you watch at Christmas? La Bohème has a nice wintry ambience. Massenet’s Werther actually takes place with Christmas in the background – though, not very festively, the hero pulls the trigger on himself. Want a touch of Dickensian spookiness? Britten’s Turn of the Screw fits the bill, though again it's not exactly jolly.

For true seasonal spirit with a touch of pantomime you need Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. The music is an absolutely dream, a continuous flow of great melodies with the symphonic textures of Wagner (to whom he was an assistant – he helped prepare the score for Parsifal).

Humperdinck originally composed Hansel and Gretel for his sister Adelheid Wette as a family play; they thought  it was so good that they fleshed it out as a full-scale opera. It was Adelheid who made crucial changes to the original story – adding characters such as the Sandman, the Dew Fairy and the father. And it was she who decided that the witch should be turned into gingerbread, thus softening the original Grimm ending where she’s burnt to a crisp in the oven.

Yet the darkness of all Brothers Grimm tales is still there the opera. Despite the beer-hall jolliness at the beginning, at heart Hansel and Gretel is about abandoned children. Unloved and lost, they fend for themselves.

During the Act 2 Traumpantomime, angels appear in the woods to protect the children as they fall asleep and present them with gifts. You can see the sequence poignantly interpreted by the Royal Opera in 2008 below: in their sleep the children have an apparition of their parents – both warm and benevolent in their collective fantasies. They are given hugh boxes of presents. They are loved like they never have been in real life. Eagerly opening them, they discover…. well, watch:

Hansel and Gretel was an instant hit in 1893, translated into many languages and performed worldwide. It has never dropped out of mainstream repertory. However, Humperdinck was never to write another successful opera. With this work he briefly filled the void left by Wagner. Seven years later, Richard Strauss, who conducted the world premiere ofHansel and Gretel, forged a new musical language for German opera in his one-act shocker Salome.

Engelbert Humperdinck died in 1921, thankfully unaware of the musical atrocities that would be perpetrated in his name. Steel yourself:

This article is from my blog on the Daily Telegraph Originally published on 16 Dec 2013