Hansel Und Gretel

Published Monday 21 July 2008 at 10:15 by George Hall

Maybe because it’s a summer event and Hansel and Gretel a story familiar from the pantomime season, but Humperdinck’s delightful opera has never previously been staged at Glyndebourne.

Now they make up for this gap with a sensational orchestral performance from the London Philharmonic, conducted by Kazushi Ono, and a memorable production by Laurent Pelly, best known in the UK for two successful Donizetti comedies at Covent Garden.

Barbara de Limburg Stirum’s sets and Pelly’s costumes present the kids as today’s dispossessed, living literally in a cardboard box and with parents that should get a visit from social services. Joel Adam’s lighting makes the forest scene utterly enchanting. The witch’s cottage is a nutritionist’s nightmare - a mammoth pile of the kind of food and drink kids love, but shouldn’t.

Pelly’s touch is less sure with the magical visions. Neither the Sandman nor the Dew Fairy, excellently sung though they are by Amy Freston and Malin Christensson respectively, are visually more than plastic-tinselly.

The children in white who replace Humperdinck’s 14 angels are an uncertain quantity, while the chorus of obese kids who come on at the end, while logical enough, are a touch un-PC.

But you’ll never see or hear a better Hansel and Gretel than Jennifer Holloway and Adriana Kucerova, while the two parents - Irmgard Vilsmaier’s Mother and Klaus Kuttler’s Father - are strong, and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s comic-grotesque witch enormous fun.