A new take on an old favourite

This year’s Southland Festival of the Arts is off to a great start with audiences enjoying a unique opera version of the classic children’s fairytale, Hansel and Gretel.

Opera Bluff, in association with Venture Southland, presented the show, which marked the beginning of the 2011 Southland Festival of the Arts on Friday, 29 April at Centrestage Theatre in Invercargill.

The stars of the show, internationally-acclaimed opera performers Amanda Winfield and Rebecca Ryan, together with Sarah Court deliver a sensational stage performance accompanied by a chamber orchestra.

Conducted and directed by international talent, Ravil Atlas, the performers told the story of Hansel and Gretel, two children who were sent into the woods by their exhausted mother to fetch food for the struggling family. The children become lost in the woods and stumble across a gingerbread house covered in sweets.

Enticed by the sweets, the hungry children are caught by an evil witch who uses the house to attract children and then keeps them under her spell. The witch tries to fatten up Hansel so she can then turn him into gingerbread using her magical oven. The plan is foiled when Hansel and Gretel push the witch into her own oven and turn her to gingerbread. They then use the witch’s wand to free all the children who had fallen victim to the witch's trap.  

This operatic version of Hansel and Gretel retained all aspects of the timeless German fairytale, written by Engelbert Humperdinck, whilst thrilling and captivating the audience through song.

Photography by Corrina Housham