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Donald Macleod delves into a period when Humperdinck argued with his sister Adelheid over Hansel and Gretel.

German composer, Engelbert Humperdinck, became an international celebrity with his music for the stage. His lasting hit was his opera, Hansel and Gretel, which is featured in its entirety across this week. There were other huge successes too. Die Heirat wider Willen (The Reluctant Marriage) was highly praised after its premiere at the Royal Opera in Berlin, and Humperdinck took 19 curtain calls in London for his stage work Das Wunder (The Miracle). In New York, at the Metropolitan Opera House, after the premiere of Humperdinck’s opera Königskinder (King's Children), the applause just kept going so that the management had to turn the lights off, in order to force the audience to leave.

Humperdinck was born in Siegburg, and from early on his parents encouraged his musical abilities, provided he focused on his other school commitments, too. He went on to study at the Cologne Conservatoire and soon fell under the spell of Wagner whom he met, and later worked with, in the preparation of Wagner’s opera, Parsifal. Humperdinck travelled Europe, and in the early 1890s he saw the premiere of his own opera Hansel and Gretel, which was performed on sixty-nine German stages within one year. Humperdinck became a professor of composition in Berlin and, between his teaching duties, he continued to write many works for the stage. Opera houses clambered to give the premiere of a new work by Humperdinck and he became a giant of his times. It is his opera Hansel and Gretel for which he is remembered today.

With Hansel and Gretel such a huge success, Humperdinck was soon able to buy a villa overlooking the river Rhine. Yet, he struggled to write another work with the same enormous popular appeal as his first opera. He channelled all his efforts in Königskinder, which was originally to feature spoken song, or speech-song. It received mixed reviews and was not the success Humperdinck had hoped for. This was at a time when Humperdinck had argued with his sister Adelheid. Adelheid had provided the libretto for Hansel and Gretel and felt that the proportion of the royalties she received were not enough. Soon though, Humperdinck found himself, with his family, heading to Berlin where he had been appointed Professor of Composition at the Academy of Arts. He now, occasionally, received the odd imperial commission too.

Erinnerung
Hinrich Alpers, piano

Liebesorakel
Christina Landshamer, soprano
Hinrich Alpers, piano

Königskinder (excerpt)
Ofelia Sala (The Goose Girl), soprano
Nora Gubisch (The Witch), mezzo-soprano
Jonas Kaufmann (The King’s Son), tenor
Detlef Roth (The Fiddler), baritone
Opéra Orchestra National de Montpellier
Armin Jordan, conductor

Moorish Rhapsody (Elegy at Sunset)
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra
Martin Fischer-Dieskau, conductor

Hansel and Gretel (excerpt)
Ruth Ziesak (Gretal), soprano
Christine Schäfer (The Dew Fairy), soprano
Jennifer Larmore (Hansel), mezzo-soprano
Hanna Schwarz (The Witch), mezzo-soprano
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Donald Runnicles, conductor

Die Heirat wider Willen (excerpt)
Malmö Opera Orchestra
Dario Salvi, conductor

Produced by Luke Whitlock