Humperdinck’s 100th

Sixtus says:

It truly is a masterpiece — surely the best opera in German between Parsifal and Salome.

Too bad it is often dramatically and musically disfigured by a male playing the role of the witch even though Humperdinck’s score specifies a mezzo-soprano, which in his day would be interpreted as what today’s “wokeness” would refer to as a cis-female. [This is quite unlike Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde where the composer explicitly states that the Alto part can be executed by a Baritone, which introduces a decidedly homophilic aura to der Abschied.]

Having a cis-male (of any vocal category) as the witch raises all sorts of paedophilic resonances unlikely to have been intended by the composer nor, probably, by the Grimm brothers, despite the already disturbing nature of their story. Humperdinck’s opera (like the Grimm tale) deals with enough issues to add this one too. It is nonetheless a very adult opera too often performed only as Disney-style children’s fluff.