Carving in Snow

What a fabulous night. I'm just back from Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel , a student production at the Queensland Conservatorium , directed by Michael Gow and conducted by Johannes Fritzsch . How blessed these students are to be working on this glorious score with two great artists. And the design by recent NIDA grad Charles Davis is worthy of any opera house. Great to see the Con devoting significant resources to what must be a priceless learning experience f or the students involved, in the pit and on the stage.  I love this opera. I've known every note for 25 years, and it's a score that keeps on giving. It's a miraculous synthesis of German folkiness and Wagnerian complexity. Humperdinck was a student of Wagner's - he assisted at the premiere of Parsifal , and even wrote a bar or two for a tricky scene transition. Hansel and Gretel , completed in 1893, with a libretto by his sister who urged on the project, is full of Wagner - the climaxes, ...

L ast night I went to Opera Queensland's production of Otello , directed by Simon Phillips and conducted by Queensland Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor Johannes Fritzsch. It's an opera I've been fond of for many years, so it gave me great pleasure to freshly admire Verdi's great achievement. There are around 300 operas made from Shakespeare's plays. Only three are of the first rank: Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream , and two of Verdi's - Otello and Falstaff . Verdi, who celebrates his 200th anniversary this year, adored Shakespeare, even though he could not read English. He devoured new translations. Famously, he sat with King Lear beside his bed for years, but could not find an operatic solution. I suspect that the failure of almost all Shakespearean opera often has to do with an unwillingness to dispense with the poetry. The plays are already brilliantly full and require no further music - a reason why non-poetic texts often make th...