United Kingdom Longborough Festival Opera 2026 [4] – Humperdinck, Hansel and Gretel: Soloists, Longborough Festival Youth Chorus and Orchestra / Karen Kamensek (conductor). Longborough, Gloucestershire, 30.7.2026. (CP)
Opera at Longborough in 2026 nears the end of a very pleasing season with a witty production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s masterpiece Hansel and Gretel, a fairy-tale opera some would say emphatically not for children. However, throughout this season Longborough Youth Chorus and Longborough Community Chorus under Director David Eaton have proved to be an extremely valuable resource in productions. The recent production of Macbeth (review here) and now this opera with its supernatural themes benefitted from their confident singing. Imagine for a moment, the resources Artistic Director Polly Graham will have at her disposal for next year’s production of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. What fun she will have with Act III and the gathered townsfolk on midsummer’s day at the open meadow on the Pegnitz!
Richard Wagner was in many ways a mentor to Engelbert Humperdinck from the time they met on a study tour of Italy. Humperdinck helped with the production of Parsifal in Bayreuth in 1881 and was at risk of becoming known as an imitator of Wagner. Hansel and Gretel was his determined and successful effort to find his own path; despite using the Wagnerian range of colours and textures, the music is simple. Longborough’s orchestra is simply outstanding from the horn-dominated opening bars to the concluding support for the Evening Prayer and the very happy fairy-tale ending. Under the inspirational leadership of Karen Kamensek, the orchestra completes an excellent season. The overture is played without distractions before handprints on the fringe of the travelling curtains open to expose the first of the simple sets (from Anisha Fields), this first a black and white one with child-like paintings.
With a witty translation by Sir David Pountney of the Adelheid Wette original interpretation of the fairy-tale by the Brothers Grimm, there is so much to enjoy in this production. Director Lucy Bailey takes this story seriously to produce a lighthearted outcome. She is very fortunate to welcome back to the Longborough stage the remarkable capabilities of Lee Bisset and Darren Jeffery, two of Longborough’s Wagnerian success stories. Many will retain happy memories of Bisset’s Brünnhilde and Jeffery’s Wotan. Both are in their element in the roles of Mother and Father to the young Hansel and Gretel, both these roles sung by members of the Longborough Emerging Artists programme. Mezzo-soprano Joanna Harries (Hansel) and soprano Rosalind Dobson (Gretel), identically dressed as scruffy urchins in white full-length dungaree outfits including bob wigs in need of a good shampoo, singing the first of several well-known nursery rhymes. Both sing intelligibly and succeed with their storytelling through song. The arrival of Lee Bisset as Mother is an especially dramatic moment. She arrives through the wall of her cottage, soon to be followed through the same hole by an inebriated Darren Jeffery returning from a broom-selling day with the line, ‘a boom town is a broom town’! Bisset is a frustrated Mother and Jeffery is a troubled Father, a masterful combination. With both children searching for berries in the wood, Hansel scoffing the most, fear grips them both as night arrives and sleep beckons. How appropriate that with the arrival of the excellent chorus, the children revive!
The third act opens with stunning horns once more, trombones, too, with Hansel and Gretel asleep on a red checked plinth as the fun and games of the ‘sweets scene’ begins. With a new chorus of chefs, a Dew Fairy delightfully depicted by Kelli-Ann Masterson wheeling a trolley offering early morning coffee. A very big red tongue encouraging overindulgence in the house full of sweets is a fitting moment for Lee Bisset to make her entry as the Witch dressed in structured tailoring and handbag of the power-dressed! With the force-feeding of Hansel, the burning of the Witch in the oven, her incinerated skeleton reduced to ashes, there is drama throughout Act III. Stolen children, represented by the Longborough Youth Chorus, are to be freed, have their sight restored by Hansel and Gretel and greeted warmly by Mother and Father as the rescue is complete. Chorus singing throughout is excellent, the orchestra in peak form enjoying Humperdinck’s unforgettable orchestration.
In a witty programme article, Malika Jumbe writing for Opera, traces the forces shaping Humperdinck’s triumph of Hansel and Gretel which has prevailed and has defined Humperdinck’s legacy. Longborough Festival Opera’s production is a triumph, too.
Clive Peacock
Featured Image: Loughborough Festival Opera’s Hansel and Gretel © Matthew Williams-Ellis
Production:
Director – Lucy Bailey
Set and Costume designer – Anisha Shields
Lighting director – Ben Ormerod
Movement director – Michael Ashcroft
Associate designer – Alys Whitehead
Assistant director – Jan Robotycki
Director of Youth Chorus – David Eaton
Youth Chorus Mentor – Emily Cutter
Cast:
Hansel – Joanna Harries
Gretel – Rosalind Dobson
Mother / The Witch – Lee Bisset
Father – Darren Jeffery
Sandman – Laura Fleur
Dew Fairy – Kelli-Ann Masterson