Scottish Opera: Hansel & Gretel

Paisley Town Hall - 14/12/23

Orchestra of Scottish Opera | Junior Chorus of Hansel & Gretel | Stuart Stratford, conductor | Lea Shaw, mezzo-soprano | Catriona Hewitson, soprano | Shuna Scott Sendall, soprano | Ross Cumming, baritone | Inna Husieva, soprano

The ‘real’ Engelbert Humperdinck’s greatest (and only) hit, his Grimm’s folktale-inspired opera ‘Hansel & Gretel’, has always been a work for which my feelings have been somewhat ambivalent.  The primary school I attended between the ages of 9 and 12 had an LP of highlights from the opera and I was then, and remain now, totally beguiled by the music.  Even before my teens, though, I was more suspicious of an underlying message that seemed to say: “good little boys and girls who always say their prayers can come to no harm; don’t worry about the grinding poverty and starvation, or the dodgy parents, or the dodgier child-eating neighbours”.  I have mellowed with age, dear reader, but I still feel almost as uncomfortable with Humperdinck’s politics as I do with those of his pal Wagner.  But then, to be fair, it’s not all angels and fairies and sandmen – the eponymous weans do show courage and resourcefulness and do outwit the evil witch (and we’ll leave discussions of misogyny to another day).

Paisley Town Hall was the packed venue for Scottish Opera’s concert staging in English translation on the night of 14th December.  About 4/5 of the stage area was devoted to the Orchestra of Scottish Opera, conducted by Music Director Stuart Stratford, and I am delighted to record that no compromises had been made with Humperdinck’s sumptuous scoring – it was the full Monty, including a bass clarinettist, not one of the other two clarinets doubling.  From the start of the overture, the lovely ‘Evening Prayer’ melody, the playing was superb.  A list of Scottish orchestras that omits the SO band is not a list – they are right up there with any of our other orchestras and any opera orchestra worldwide.  The remaining fifth of the front projection of the stage and a further three yards of parterre were given to the action, directed by Roxana Haines.  20 young singers from SO Junior Chorus were not merely echoes in the forest, angels and former victims of the witch in suspended animation but had also devised and drawn the sets and symbolic props, which had, where necessary, been enlarged by the SO Production Studios workshops.  Panels parterre left and right set the woodland scene, while the gingerbread house and the Witch’s oven were brought on as required.  This lent a naivety and innocence to the setting which threw the darker melodramatic elements into sharper relief.  Supertitles allowed a fuller appreciation of David Pountney’s translation, which is uniformly excellent, with wit, modern directness of idiom and a natural flow, also compensating for the few moments when Humperdinck’s rather full scoring defeats the diction of even the greatest singers.

This was my first ‘Hansel & Gretel’ after a gap of nearly 12 years.  The last one was also Scottish Opera, February 2012, and a lavish full staging in English at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre.  In 2012, the wonderful Ailish Tynan projected an unforgettably feisty Gretel, so I had admonished myself to refrain from subjecting the Paisley production to any unfair comparisons.  In the event, I needn’t have worried.

Scottish soprano Catriona Hewitson was a perfect Gretel: bossy, self-righteous, wily and mischievous by turn.  I last heard her as a stunning Casilda in SO’s brilliant October 2021 ‘Gondoliers’ while she was still a Scottish Opera Emerging Artist.  Well, she has fully emerged.  Fabulous voice right across the tessitura and a great stage presence.  I have one minor gripe. The normally excellent hair and makeup of Scottish Opera managed, to my inexpert eye at least, to make her look older rather than younger.

American mezzo-soprano Lea Shaw was a no less mischievous, hard-pressed, ever-hungry Hansel.  Now a Scottish Opera Associate Artist, she was an Emerging Artist back in May when her delicious contribution as Mercédès to the frivolous Act III Tarot duet in SO’s controversial ‘Carmen’ won my praise.  She is a fabulously engaging and communicative performer to watch and listen to, with a gloriously rich vocal timbre.  I look forward to seeing her Flora in SO’s ‘La Traviata’ next year.

Traditionally, for added melodrama, the roles of ill-tempered Gertrude (the mother) and the Witch are sung by the same mezzo, advertised as Heather Ireson.  However, she was indisposed, so instead we had a replacement, none other than Scottish soprano Shuna Scott Sendall.  From her entry, I found her performance pleasingly familiar, but I admit it took a while for the penny to drop.  It was she who had sung the roles in the 2012 SO production, when she was a John Mather Trust Emerging Artist with the company, having previously won the inaugural 2010 BBC Radio 2 Kiri Prize.  She was impressive back then but wow, absolutely stunning in Paisley, both as the irascible Gertrude and a menacingly camp Witch.  Little touches of humour added to the pantomime atmosphere, like when she ‘borrowed’ Stuart’s baton to use as a wand (leaving him to conduct the rest of Act III without a baton) and prowled the front row of the audience in search of a well-fed wean to eat.  And what a voice!  Superb.

I have had the pleasure of following the career of Scottish baritone Ross Cumming for just over a year now, with fine performances last year in Double Bills from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Opera School Masters programme and now a Scottish Opera Emerging Artist with a supporting role in ‘The Barber of Seville’ 2 months ago.  As the big-hearted Peter (the father), he was charismatic and engaging, whilst his warm baritone made a great first entrance through the audience and was the only principal never once drowned out by Humperdinck’s occasionally weighty scoring.  I’ll happily keep watching as he goes from strength to strength.

Ukrainian soprano, Inna Husieva, another Scottish Opera Emerging Artist, whose Berta (Bartolo’s exasperated long-suffering housekeeper) shone in the ‘Barber of Seville’, was a sweet and radiant benevolence as both Sandman and Dew Fairy, though having loved her Berta, I long to hear her crystal clarity in the gutsier roles. 

The Junior Chorus were thoroughly excellent, with great clarity of diction and steady accuracy of pitch, a credit to themselves and Chorus Director, Susannah Wapshott.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am still a novice in navigating the peculiarities of parking in Paisley, to say nothing of the confusing layout of the venue, the newly refurbished Paisley Town Hall is growing on me as a congenial and intimate auditorium and it contributed immensely to the enjoyability of the performance.  It is, sadly, infected with the same fetish for dimming the house lights to Stygian gloom which has broken out all over Scotland, preventing reading the programme (not really a problem for me on this occasion), but also the writing of legible notes (which, frankly, is an issue of significance for this reviewer).  I know I am not alone in this.  Wouldn’t it be lovely if Paisley Town Hall was the first to start a new trend of illumination?

Cover photo: Sally Jubb