The Royal Academy of Music’s autumn operatic showcase gives us another production of Humperdinck’s opera a few weeks prior to the one by The Royal Opera and following that staged at Glyndebourne over the summer.
Alexander Campbell of Classical Source writes:
The Royal Academy of Music has engaged Sian
Edwards to conduct, from whom the work received a warm, idiomatic
interpretation. Occasionally there was a want of lushness in the upper
strings of the Royal Academy Sinfonia – but some of the lower sting
detail was given greater prominence to wonderful effect.
The singing was generally very fine. Charlotte
Stephenson is a mellow-voiced and physically gangly Hänsel, who made
much of the lower lines in the duetting with Robyn Kirk’s strong-voiced
and rather single-minded Gretel. They make a good foil to one another,
even if Hänsel’s deportment was sometimes more feminine than boy-like.
Gerard Collett’s father was well sung in a warm and characterful
baritone.
Read more at Classical Source
Neil Fisher of the Times writes:
Ramster goes down the modern-day route: the Mother (Amy Radford) is a
pony-tailed chav, the Father (Gerard Collett) swigs from the vodka bottle
and pees in the sink. But then Ramster clears the decks for a strange and
disturbing forest, the arena for a wonderfully judged dream sequence in
which the loveless kids fantasise about their parents' fairytale wedding.
Just a pipe dream, alas.
It's also lit up by two sparkling performances. Robyn Kirk and Charlotte
Stephenson are the most believable brats I've seen: Stephenson's Hänsel in
particular is a real treat, her coltish mezzo deployed with mature
sophistication even while her body language screams gangly adolescent.
Read more at the Times
