Hänsel und Gretel

At Hansel and Gretel’s home there is rarely anything nourishing to eat: The family can simply not afford good food. One day the children see in their kitchen a jug full of milk and jump for joy at the idea of their getting rice pudding. Their mother comes and tells them off and unintentionally knocks over the milk jug. In a fit, as punishment, she impulsively sends the children off into the woods to gather strawberries. It occurs to her too late that a wicked witch is lurking there who likes to turn little children into gingerbread…

Engelbert Humperdinck was already during Richard Wagner’s lifetime a true Wagnerian, which had a lasting influence on his compositional style, but permanently hindered his career as a composer. After his sister asked him to compose a few songs to accompany her fairytale play for a family performance, the result was so well received that he composed an entire full-length opera based on the text, which became a hit immediately after its premiere in 1893.

The production by video artist Momme Hinrich is a colorful interplay of allusions to to well-known fairy tales, comic books, superhero films and other contemporary pop culture elements. It relates the Brother Grimm’s spooky fairy tale in the aesthetic of a Disney film with a little local color: Where, if not in Bonn, does one expect to find a witch's house built from giant gummy bears?