Rooting for the Witch
Sir: Rupert Christiansen, in his review of Humperdinck's Konigskinder (Opera, 8 February), complains that the ENO pro- duction reveals 'no evident situation, atmo- sphere or conflict' to assist him in deter- mining whose side he 'is meant to be on'. I had no such difficulty. One does not have to be a student of Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment to understand the moral issues in a fairy tale, and, whereas Humperdinck's music may be derivative of both Siegfried and Parsifal, this opera's sto- ryline is pure Grimm. Elsa Bernstein, on whose play the libretto is based, survived incarceration in Theresienstadt. The pro- ducer, David Pountney, has dressed the starving and dying children in concentra- tion camp garb and their heartless persecu- tors are in lederhosen. How can anyone have difficulties in determining who are the good guys?
`Wow, Mick Jagger, I've got all your police records.' Last Christmas I attended the Vienna Volksoper production of Humperdinck's more popular opera, Hansel and Gretel. The audience of little Austrian blondies, with their parents, applauded furiously as the Wicked Witch was pushed into the oven and burnt into a cookie. It sounded like the re-run of Leni Riefensthal's film of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally. Good fairy-tale stuff except that in the Vienna production the stage make-up of the Witch and the two-dimensional cookie in profile unmis- takably look like Benjamin Disraeli in drag. One would have thought that any produc- tion in Waldheim Land, requiring the immolation of anyone in an oven, would have dictated some delicacy in the visible ethnic characterisation of the victim. No doubt the Volksoper producer knew his Christmas audience! In Vienna I therefore had no problem rooting for the Wicked Witch, whereas in London I cried shame- lessly as the Theresienstadt children sank one by one to the ground to be charitably covered by a blanket of falling snowflakes. Claus von Bulow
109 Onslow Square, London SW7
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