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Honey trap: Hansel (Jennifer Holloway), the Witch (Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke) and Gretel (Adriana Kucerova) in the supermarket
There is a piquancy bordering on obscenity when an opera such as Hansel and Gretel, dealing with hunger, is staged at a house such as Glyndebourne where the long interval is spent gorging on delicacies of which the children could only dream.
Originally conceived as a lighthearted entertainment for children, Humperdinck's opera remained standard Christmas fare for decades. However, epoch-making productions by David Pountney and Richard Jones in the Eighties and Nineties changed our view of the work irrevocably, bringing out the Grimm undertones of grinding poverty and parental cruelty verging on child abuse.
There was keen interest to see what the brilliant French director Laurent Pelly, best known here for his hilarious stagings of Donizetti comedies, would make of Humperdinck's masterpiece. Sadly, the answer is very little.
Toning down or eliminating the darker resonances, he produces a conventional Act 1 in the broom-maker's house and a bland Act 2 in the wood, before descending into farce for Act 3.
True, the broom-maker's house is a cardboard prefab with alarmingly collapsible walls and a decrepit fridge but there's none of Pountney's sharp socio-political observation.
Nor is there any of the surreal, freewheeling imagination that marked both Pountney's and Jones's handling of the dream sequence. Here, white-clad angelic children simply frolic around the wood, finally circling Hansel and Gretel.
In Act 3, stacked supermarket shelves represent the gingerbread house and the Witch is played for laughs by Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as a kinky transsexual pantomime dame.
Pelly's one stroke of originality, the procession of obese children imprisoned in the gingerbread house, misfires when the post-prandial audience fails to notice their sad expressions and titters.
Jennifer Holloway and Adriana Kucerova are splendidly convincing as Hansel and Gretel, with Irmgard Vilsmaier and Klaus Kuttler as their hard-pressed parents. Amy Freston and Malin Christensson are well characterised as the Sandman and Dew Fairy.
Kazushi Ono conducts the score with affection, leaning towards a sentimental rather than muscular view of the work. That at least is a more forgiveable approach than Pelly's neutral, superficial reading which obviates all the psychological complexities of this fascinating opera.
• Until 29 August (01273 81500, www.glyndebourne.com).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
