The World's Most Famous Operas

Hansel and Gretel...

Music by: Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921) Rendered into Arabic by: Samir Shikhani

An opera in three acts, adapted from the legends of the Brothers Grimm

First produced in Weimar in 1893

The Characters: • Hansel, a boy • Gretel, a girl • Peter, their father • Gertrude, their mother • The Sandman • The Dawn Fairy • The Witch • Angels, children and boys.

Time: imaginary. Place: Germany.

Act One

Scene One: the house of Peter and Gertrude.

The first scene takes place inside a small, wretched house standing at the edge of the forest. It is the house of Peter the broom-maker and his wife Gertrude and their children Hansel and Gretel. The father and mother have gone to the market, leaving their children at home to do the work: Hansel making brooms and Gretel knitting wool; but, as children will, they spend most of their time singing and dancing. The song they sing is about the ducks that go barefoot because the cobbler cannot make them shoes.

In the midst of their merriment and din the mother returns, worn out and grieved to the last degree. She has not been able to earn her bread from her work, and there is nothing in the house to eat but a little milk in a small vessel. She flares up in anger at

her children and scolds them for their laziness. And when she tries to push them, she strikes the milk jug and breaks it.

And so she sends them off to the forest to gather strawberries, sinks onto a chair, implores God to send food to her family, and then falls into a deep sleep. Soon Peter's voice is heard from outside, singing "Ra la la la, hunger is the most skillful of cooks." Luck has come to his aid: he has sold all his brooms and returned home carrying a basket full of victuals.

He asks after his children, and Gertrude answers that she broke the milk jug without meaning to and had to send them to the forest to gather strawberries. The husband cries out in alarm: "Do you not know that in the forest there is a wicked old witch? She rides her broomstick at midnight and goes hunting after children. And by day she makes them into cakes and biscuits which she bakes in her magic oven and devours." Terror runs through the parents' limbs, and they resolve to search for the little ones at once.

Scene Two: a treeless clearing in a forest.