St. Louis Public Radio will carry the Met Opera broadcast of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 12 noon. Approximate running time 2 hours, 10 minutes with an intermission at approximately 1:00 p.m.
The Met's web site says:
The Met’s wickedly funny production returns as this season’s English-language holiday presentation for families. Aleksandra Kurzak is Gretel, with Alice Coote alternating as Hansel. Robert Brubaker is the witch who plots to bake them into gingerbread.
In a December 18, 2011, review in the New York Times Steve Smith says:
Grimm’s fairy tales are hardly kids’ stuff: a point that Humperdinck’s buoyantly luscious music, Adelheid Wette’s slightly softened libretto and David Pountney’s quippy English translation don’t disguise. Richard Jones, the director, cleverly based his imaginative 2007 production around the relatable notion of gnawing hunger; two acts set in kitchens frame a central scene set in a haunted forest that magically transforms into a whimsical dining room.
That second act, with its animated trees, pudding-faced chefs and dignified fish waiter, probably held the most charm for the scores of children on hand. A cheer also went up when the Witch — played to the hilt by the tenor Robert Brubaker — was booted into her own oversize oven in the end.
You had the sense that the cast knew its audience well. The mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey (who alternates in the role with Alice Coote), as Hansel, and the soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, as Gretel, sang beautifully and well. The Polish-born Ms. Kurzak’s lightly accented English earned mostly top marks.
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