'Hansel and Gretel' has many layers

An impressive crowd gathered at the Musical Arts Center last Friday night for the opening of the Jacobs School of Music IU Opera Theater production of Engelbert Humperdinck's beloved opera "Hansel and Gretel." The crowd was richly rewarded for its journey.\nThe cast was enjoyable from the start, with graduate students Kathryn Leemhuis and Marie Masters as Hansel and Gretel, respectively, blending with musical perfection. Graduate students Meghann Vaughn and Adonis Abuyen played the roles of their parents. Though Vaughn and Abuyen were less dynamic onstage, they gave well-rendered musical performances nonetheless. \nThe obvious show-stealer was doctoral student Michael Match as the Witch, who, after enticing Hansel and Gretel with her gingerbread house, meets her doom in her own baking oven. Match is a counter-tenor with extraordinary vocal and dramatic abilities and elicited a much-deserved extended ovation for his aria in Act II. \nGraduate students Lindsay Kerrigan as the Sandman and Caryn Kerstetter as the Dew Fairy gave lovely performances of what are in essence lamentably small roles. With any luck, their voices will receive more stage time in the not-so-distant future.\nThe opera itself, a hybrid of Grimm fairy tale and Lutheran morality play, was seen in its time as a new emblem of German opera, successfully building upon Wagner's musical tradition while at the same time preparing the way for 20th-century German opera. No doubt it found popular appeal for the enchanted, romantic world it creates.\nThese days, however, it's a bit of a challenge to accept the music and its accompanying story quite so optimistically. Perhaps it is simply the cynicism of young adulthood, but when Hansel and Gretel's mother Gertrude foolishly sends her children into the forest to collect strawberries after she loses her temper, all I see is the plight of a woman who is simply ill-equipped for the challenges of motherhood. \nShe is plagued by hunger, stretched beyond tolerance by poverty and unable to accommodate her children's need to be playful and careless. When she and her husband Peter glorify his purchase of ham, eggs and butter, some may see nobility in such humble simplicity. I see only two pitiful adults, reduced by their economic condition to celebrating even the basic necessity of food as a luxury. When Peter sings, "hunger is the poor man's curse," my heart breaks for the truth of it.\nLuckily, the children for whom this production is intended are free from such somber readings. They see only the necessary setup for Hansel and Gretel's inevitable triumph over the Witch. They understand that if their mother had not lost her temper and bid them collect berries in the woods, Hansel and Gretel would not have had the opportunity to defeat the Witch and rid the world of the terror she had for so long reeked upon its children. They revel in Hansel and Gretel's cleverness in outsmarting the Witch and can celebrate the duo's victory with enviable innocence. \nIn the end, it was the children -- not only the ones in the audience but the superbly talented on stage -- who provided the greatest satisfaction for the evening. They are, after all, the future generation of music performers and music lovers, who, being exposed to music so early in life, will carry its value and importance with them the rest of their lives. It is for their sake "Hansel and Gretel" must be performed. \nAudiences of all ages will have two more chances to enjoy "Hansel and Gretel" at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Musical Arts Center. Tickets cost between $15 and $35 and are available at the MAC box office.