‘Hänsel und Gretel’: An Unlikely Christmas Story

Siblings Adelheid Wette and Engelbert Humperdinck create the words and music for "Hänsel und Gretel," a Christmas favorite today. Public Domain

Adelheid Wette probably had no inkling that the little fairytale she was revising for her children would evolve into an opera that would become a global holiday tradition. The German fairytale “Hänsel und Gretel,” originally published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm, was a dark, violent story about two children intentionally abandoned by their mother and father in a deep forest, where a terrible, children-eating witch lived. Wette greatly softened the plot.

In Wette’s version, the frazzled, poor mother sent her children into the forest to pick strawberries for dinner. Wette added a kindly sandman, 14 angels, and a Dew Fairy to transform the dark and scary piece into one in which good triumphs over evil.

The Grim Grimm Tale

The fairy tale of “Hänsel und Gretel” (or Grethel) was one of many regional folk stories gathered by the Grimm brothers in their effort to portray and promote a German identity in the years before Germany’s unification. All of their collected stories, which include “Rapunzel,” “Snow White,” Sleeping Beauty,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” and “Cinderella” are dark, truly grim stories, better, as we view them today, for adults to read after the kiddies go to bed than for children.

The original plot of “Hänsel and Gretel” depicts a starving family of four and a cruel mother whose desperate solution is to get rid of two of them. She tells her husband that they will give the children chunks of bread, lead them deep into the forest, and build a large bonfire. The children will be then told to wait by the fire till the parents return from chopping wood.

The intention is to abandon them, but clever Hänsel, who overhears the plan, gathers shiny pieces of flint to drop on their way into the woods, so the children can retrace their steps. It works the first time, but, during the repeated trick, he has to use pieces of bread because the mother locked the door, so he couldn’t sneak out to collect flint. Alas, birds make short work of the scattered crumbs, and the children become lost. They wander deeper into the woods and find the witch’s house “built of bread and roofed with cakes.” She lures them inside with food, then locks Hänsel in a cage with the intention of fattening him up before she bakes him. She makes Gretel her servant.

Hänsel and Gretel at the witch's house. Illustration by German artist Ludwig Richter, 1842. Public Domain

In the end, the children escape, and find their way back home after they’ve laden themselves with the witch’s “pearls and precious stones.” For some unexplained reason the mother is dead, but they have a joyous reunion with their father, who never really liked mom’s plan in the first place.

Family Play to Global Stage

Along with Wette’s changes to the original story, composer Engelbert Humperdinck, Wette’s brother, completed the transformation with the charming, folk song-inspired music he wrote to accompany his sister’s words. She had asked him to compose songs for her “Hänsel and Gretel” version so her five children could perform it at her husband’s birthday celebration.

Humperdinck had previously written songs for his sister’s adaptation of another Grimm fairy tale “Snow White.”

“The family so enjoyed their original “Hänsel and Gretel” play [that] Humperdinck and Wette adapted it, first into a full-length singspiel [play with songs], to be performed by children, then into a[n] ... opera for a large orchestra and big adult, voices,” the Seattle Opera’s website explains.

The roles of Hänsel and Gretel are sung by a mezzo-soprano and soprano respectively. It was Humperdinck’s first complete opera. “All of the German musical world became excited about Humperdinck’s creation,” states the Seattle Opera webpage.

In the fall of 1893, Siegfried Wagner, the son of Humperdinck’s mentor, Richard Wagner, conducted excerpts of the work in Leipzig. Opera composer Richard Strauss conducted the world premiere of “Hänsel und Gretel” in Weimar a month later. Strauss praised the work for its “refreshing humor, exquisitely melodic naivete, orchestral finesse. … Overall it is original, new, and authentically German.” It was Dec. 23, 1893.

The opera was a huge success. A newly unified Germany enthusiastically embraced this work based on a German fairy tale laced with German folk tunes. It was performed at 50 opera houses within a year, and in the next 20 years, it was translated into 20 languages.

Years later, on Dec. 25, 1931, NBC broadcast a matinee performance from New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House to listeners all over America. It became the first live opera broadcast on radio.

"Hänsel und Gretel," Staatsoper Wien, 2015, with Daniela Sirdam (Hänsel) and Ileana Tonca (Gretel). Christian Michelides/CC BY-SA 4.0

Additionally, it had good timing going for it. “Fascination with the imagination of childhood, and the fairy story, was in the air,” German musician David Garrett said. “In France, Massenet’s ‘Cendrillon’ (Cinderella) was to come out in 1899, perhaps influenced by ‘Hänsel and Gretel.’ In England, J.M. Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan’ dates from 1904. In Vienna, Sigmund Freud was studying the development of childish consciousness, and the links of myths and tales to the unconscious.”

Songs of Hope and Love

Hänsel and Gretel, with angels, in a production at the Staatsoper Wien, in 2015. Christian Michelides/CC BY-SA 4.0

Among the opera’s memorable songs are Humperdinck’s use of a German folk song in “Brother, Come and Dance With Me” (“Brüderchen, komm tanz mit mir”) and the lovely children’s “Evening Prayer” (“Abends Will Ich Schlafen Gehn”). Before the siblings lie down to sleep in the forest, they kneel and sing:

When at night I go to sleep, Fourteen angels watch do keep, Two my head are guarding, Two my feet are guiding; Two upon my right hand, Two upon my left hand. Two who warmly cover Two who o’er me hover, Two to whom ’tis given To guide my steps to heaven.

It seems Wette poured her love for her own children into this beautiful duet, as if an antidote for the original story’s horrible mother. Humperdinck’s lyrical, soaring melody is a prominent anchor of the overture, setting the mood for the magical theater that follows.

The composer learned well from his mentor Richard Wagner, but maintained his own musical voice. “In this work Humperdinck showed an understanding of a child’s mind and a sense of poetry, notably in the atmosphere of the woodland scene at twilight. … The Wagnerian harmonies, the simple tunes, and the resourceful orchestration maintain the musical interest on a high level,” the Brittanica website states.

Christmas is never mentioned in “Hänsel und Gretel,” but, over time, the opera has become nearly as much a holiday tradition as Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” and Handel’s “Messiah.” Perhaps it reminds us of Christmas because it has heavenly music, endless breads and cakes at the witch’s house, and, after all their struggles, the children find their way home.

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