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The Independent (Free subscription) | 29/10/2008
What is Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel about? Freudians have it typed as a rumination on primeval childhood fears – of separation from parents, of blindness, and of death. In the Grimm brothers' original version, the impoverished mother plots to kill her children by leaving them in the forest: Humperdinck kindly gives her an alter ego, with the Witch – whom the children eventually kill...
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The Independent (Free subscription) | 27/07/2008
Twice sanitised by the Brothers Grimm, the bloody tale of Hänsel und Gretel was wrapped in musical tinsel by Wagner's lapdog, Engelbert Humperdinck. As delicately scored as a Mendelssohn symphony, and as sentimental as a fairytale's apple-cheeked granny in its treatment of children, the fin de siècle operatic confection that was hailed as a masterpiece by Richard Strauss before its 1893 premiere illustrates...
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The Independent (Free subscription) | 10/07/2008
Productions of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel are like London buses: you vainly wait decades for one, then along come two at the same time, courtesy of Covent Garden in the autumn and Glyndebourne next week. This adaptation of a Grimm story may be part of the standard repertoire in German houses, but here it's consigned to that critical limbo: "for children". "But as with all good fairy...
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The Independent (Free subscription) | 10/07/2008
It is significant that the curtain is already raised and we spend Bizet's festive prelude gazing at Michael Vale's grubby, industrialised set. This back passage of Seville is about as romantic as Bizet's opera is Spanish, and it sets the tone of David McVicar's down, dirty and dangerous staging. Here's a Carmen where people shout, spit, shag, stomp and clap as passionately as they sing. There really...
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Press Releases (Free subscription) | 15/01/2008
Consistently excellent comments from guests of Sussex Hotel for the entire year Newick Park Hotel & Country Estate – 2007 winner of the Condé Nast Johansens Reader’s Award Lewes, East Sussex: Newick Park, the Country House Hotel, near Lewes and Glyndebourne in East Sussex – the popular conference and wedding venue - has been awarded the Condé Nast Johansens Reader’s Award for the excellent
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Opera Today (Free subscription) | 06/12/2007
Charlotte Higgins [The Guardian, 6 December 2007] It is a move that will take him from the hustle of Hollywood to the leafy lanes of East Sussex, from Tinseltown to the rarefied environs of Glyndebourne. Sam Mendes, director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition, is to try his hand at directing opera.
