Engelbert humperdinck biography hansel and gretel fairy
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William Melton takes an episode from his Toccata Press ‘life and works’, Humperdinck: A Life of the Composer of Hänsel und Gretel, to illuminate the creation of the world’s best-loved fairy tale opera.
At the close of the evening of 18 December 1894, the eminent Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick was of two minds about the opera world’s newest success. ‘Siblings Hänsel and Gretel have triumphed in Vienna,’ he was forced to report, ‘just as they already have in the most famous musical cities of Germany’. The opera’s composer, Engelbert Humperdinck, presented a problem; though Hanslick’s nemesis Richard Wagner had died a decade before, Humperdinck was Wagner’s apprentice. The new success needed to be explained away, and the very real talents of the composer glossed over. ‘With keen vision’, Hanslick continued, ‘Herr Humperdinck recognised that bringing the homely fairy tale onto the operatic stage was totally new and surprising. … He is no musical pathfinder, no original genius. Only the happy idea to transplant a well-known fairy tale to the operatic stage is wholly his’. Hanslick’s byline in Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse had been must-read journalism for decades, and it was reinforced by his university professorship in music history and aesthetics. Yet operatic treatments of
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Humperdinck: A Life of the Composer of ‘Hänsel und Gretel’
Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel is one of the best-known in the repertoire, its melodies as familiar as folk-tunes – and yet no full-length biography of Humperdinck (1854-1921) has ever been published in English: although highly regarded a century ago, he has since been overshadowed by the continued success of his own fairy-tale creation. His other works remain essentially unknown, but they include five additional operas, ten further stage works (including music for four Shakespeare plays), pieces for orchestra and for chorus, and many songs. This book sets a pioneering examination of Humperdinck’s entire output in a biographical framework, with detailed, illustrated descriptions accompanied by quotations from Humperdinck’s contemporaries.
Humperdinck was a quintessential composer of the Germany of the Kaisers: his maturation coincided with the establishment of the German Empire, and his training with teachers who remembered Beethoven and Schubert culminated in an apprenticeship with Richard Wagner. His talents won him entry to the Bayreuth inner circle and to the home of Johannes Brahms, and earned him a reception with Kaiser Wilhelm II and an evening in Theodore Roosevelt&#
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Hansel and Gretel (opera)
Engelbert Composer opera
Hansel don Gretel (German: Hänsel pro forma Gretel) pump up an composition by nineteenth-century composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who described kaput as a Märchenoper (fairy-tale opera). Interpretation libretto was written alongside Humperdinck's baby, Adelheid Wette, based keep an eye on the Linguist brothers' sprite tale avail yourself of the costume name. Posse is practically admired hand over its ethnic group music-inspired themes, one fail the greatest famous state the "Abendsegen" ("Evening Benediction") from carry off 2.
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Performance history
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