‘Hänsel un Gretel’ at Lyric Opera Gives Audiences A Lot To Chew On

Most people are familiar with the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale ‘Hansel and Gretel’, with the sugary, enticing house and the evil witch who bakes children. But for the Christmas season, Chicago gets a special treat as Lyric Opera presents ‘Hänsel un Gretel’ as a coproduction with the Welsh National Opera.

The libretto was written at the very end of the nineteenth-century by Adelheid Wette, wife of opera composer Engelbert Humperdinck, as a Christmas present for her children. She asked him to write songs to go along with the story, and after many revisions, Humperdinck turned his work into a full opera, and it as first performed during the Christmas season in Weimar in 1893 conducted by Richard Strauss.