Just in: Third casualty in Vienna’s haunted Hansel and Gretel
mainFirst Chen Reiss pulled out as Gretel with a chest infection.
Then Daniela Sindram missed the dress rehearsal as Hansel (she’ll be fine tonight).
Now Adrian Eröd had to cancel tonight with tracheitis; Clemens Unterreiner will sing Peter in the première.
Vienna State Opera has not done Hansel and Gretel in 70 years.
Maybe it’s spooked.
So…second casualty then? It is hardly a casualty if she sings, right?
Tonca has been around at the VStO for years and has good German. Sindram is fab. CT has worked before with Baechle and Schuster.
So all will be fine, unless Unterreiner can’t handle Peter’s one big scene. Frankly the Sleep Fairy and the Dew Fairy are just as important. And the orchestra!
70 years???? I find that absolutely amazing. Anyone know why they wouldn’t do this ever-fresh, appealing work?
I was amazed too. I always thought a piece like that was pretty standard repertoire, especially in Austro-German houses. To expand a little on this, it is actually 70 years since the first performance of the previous production of H&G at the Staatsoper (21/11/45), and that production ran for 59 performances, the final one being given on 23/6/58. Its still pretty extraordinary its not been heard at the Staatsoper for nearly 60 years.
Probably because it’s been pretty much the province of the Volksoper which has had a reportedly very popular and much-loved Inszenierung by Karl Doench.
Carl Dönch often sang the Witch at the Volksoper. A couple of years ago Mara Zampieri was the Witch!
Doench (sorry, can’t do the umlauts!) also sang it at the Met in the late 60s.
“I always thought a piece like that was pretty standard repertoire, especially in Austro-German houses.”
There is no such thing any more as ‘standard repertoire in Austro-German houses’ as the heads there are scared shitless to be called reactionary or worse if they put on this (or similar) operas without having them ‘re-imagined’ by some Eurotrash director.
I’m already looking forward to the German-speaking critics complaining about the lack of bare bottoms, suitcases, concentration camp imagery (the oven!), and refereces to Fritzl.
As said elsewhere, the only reason that the Staatsoper does not mount this often is that the Volksoper is just down the road. In the same way, there are several English language pieces that Covent Garden rarely performs. Not because they do not believe in their inherent quality; but rather that they are more the province of the ENO. As with London, regular opera goers in Vienna attend both the Staatsoper and the Volksoper.