Two neglected children of feckless/deprived (according to your point of view) parents, kidnapped while gorging on junk food. Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel provides a checklist of contemporary social issues. All that’s missing is the social worker struggling with an impossible caseload.

It took the landmark productions of David Pountney at ENO in 1987 and Richard Jones at WNO in 1998 to show us this was more than the aural equivalent of the gingerbread house that ensnares the wide-eyed children. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier in their new production strike what seems an ideal balance between the saccharine elements of the story and score and the disturbing social and psychological undercurrents.

The opening act is set not in the usual kitchen with 1950s refrigerator but in the children’s bedroom, cleverly boxed in to accentuate the size of the adults playing children. The painted flats of the forest invoke a fairytale setting and the virtuoso use of sliding panels may be an in-joke (Humperdinck provided music for Wagner’s Parsifal for a scene change involving such a cyclorama).

Best of all is the Dream Pantomime, a cosy hearthside scene with storybook animals. A loving father and mother hand over Christmas presents — a single sandwich each, devoured eagerly by the hungry children. Christian Fenouillat’s designs and Christophe Forey’s lighting work in perfect synchrony with the music to produce a heartwarming climax with a knowing nod towards the inherent sentimentality of the moment.

The final scene in the witch’s cottage is chilling and darkly humorous. The veteran Anja Silja (a star at Bayreuth in the 1960s) now deploys a vibrato almost as fearsome as her predatory sexuality. Her previous victims are strung up on hooks like meat.

Angelika Kirchschlager’s tousled, boyish Hänsel and Diana Damrau’s Gretel are dramatically convincing and vocally superb, while their parents, excellently sung and played by Elizabeth Connell and Thomas Allen, earn our sympathy as well as our censure. Pumeza Matshikiza’s goblin-like Sandman is truly magical and Anita Watson’s feather-dusting Dew Fairy another amusing creation. Colin Davis, unafraid to relish the icing on the cake, draws a warm, effulgent sound from the orchestra.
Until 1 January (020 7304 4000).