LA Opera’s bewitching Hansel and Gretel may be the most enchanting, optically opulent opera this reviewer has ever seen at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. With its stellar stagecraft , stagemanship and eye- popping, jaw-dropping scenery designed by director Doug Fitch with lighting by Duane Schuler, the audience is transported into a spellbinding, haunted forest full of spirits, including a Dew Fairy (Georgia soprano Sarah Vautour), a Sandman (North Carolina mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven), plus a spooky witch (mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who’s quite the ham).
Suffused with special effects, the overall ambiance evokes a sort of psychedelic Sesame Street with a Big Bird on acid, combined with elements from Peter Pan’s Neverland, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and the Beatles’ 1968 animated feature Yellow Submarine. The original score synthesizes Wagnerian flourishes with Germanic folk music by 19th century composer Engelbert Humperdinck (not to be confused with the 1960s Tom Jones knock-off, a British pop singer who adopted the same Germanic moniker as his stage name).
