Music critic Eduard Hanslick once labeled it the most important German opera since Wagner’s Parsifal. Many of the composer’s contemporaries praised it as both thoroughly good and thoroughly German. Even today, several commentators agree that Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel successfully provided a link between nineteenth- and twentieth-century German opera. In its time, the work provided a popular and fresh alternative to the current opera scene. In the year following its première, the opera appeared in over 50 theaters and opera houses in Germany and Europe. It was translated into at least 20 other languages and was the first opera to be broadcast complete on the radio. Hansel and Gretel retains an active place in the current opera repertoire and is especially popular with children during the Christmas season. By these accounts, Humperdinck’s first opera was an overwhelming success.

Yet, the work had a rather humble beginning as a family project. In April 1890, Humperdinck’s sister, Adelheid Wette, wrote a dramatic version of Hansel and Gretel for performance by her children and asked Humperdinck to write music for four folk songs. Her one stipulation was that the music be simple enough to be sung by boys and girls. Later that year, Humperdinck expanded it into a Singspiel (a play with songs interspersed with spoken dialogue) consisting of 16 songs with piano accompaniment. He presented this version to his fiancée, Hedwig Taxer, as an engagement present at Christmas, and it was performed privately in the Wette home. At the persuasion of his family, Humperdinck agreed to turn the work into a full-scale opera.

The final version was completed in September 1893 but was not an immediate success. Humperdinck initially submitted his creation to a contest designed to find the next great German opera, but the jury found it unsuitable for performance. Its first performance, requested by Grand Duke Karl of Saxe-Weimar, was given on December 23, 1893, at the Court Theatre in Weimar under the baton of Richard Strauss. The production was riddled with problems: believing the opera to be too old-fashioned, management cut costs; the actress slated to play Hansel sprained her ankle, which forced a last-minute rearrangement of cast members; and a copyist’s delay with the orchestra parts required them to delete the overture from the performance. The second performance, given in Munich under the direction of Hermann Levi, was better prepared and launched Humperdinck’s work into its more lasting success.

The popular appeal of Hansel and Gretel can be partly explained by the state of German opera during the last decades of the nineteenth century. The dramas of Richard Wagner had dominated the stage during the previous years, and even after his death in 1883, aspects of his principles and style–orchestral continuity, treatment of leitmotifs, instrumental effects–continued to pervade new German works. His imitators, however, struggled to recreate the magical alchemy of Wagner’s works, and their lack of originality led to an influx of Italian verismo opera, with its realistic, but violent and sensational, plots. In response, many Germanic composers sought something original, yet also national. One answer emerged in the Märchenoper, or fairy-tale opera, of which Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel is considered the ultimate example. Chief characteristics of this genre include a return to the enchanted, folkloristic material of the early Romantic era and inclusion of supernatural or irrational elements, often in a simple, child-like setting.

To be sure, Humperdinck did not completely break from the Wagnerian tradition in this opera. Particularly evident is his use of leitmotifs: a folk-song motive recurs in several variations throughout Act I, the Witch’s Ride prelude to Act II is hinted at in the previous act and reappears in different guises in Act III, and phrases from the famous “Evening Prayer” in Act II occur throughout the opera, most notably, in the overture and final scene. Furthermore, the orchestral preludes and interludes often feature complex harmonies and rich orchestral polyphony, with multiple themes woven together. This Wagnerian orchestration, however, is balanced by simple melodies and traditional music. Hansel and Gretel even features four authentic folk melodies: “Suzy, little Suzy” in Act I, the “Ral-la-la-la” tune sung by the father, “Now once upon a time in the wood alone” in Act II, and the horn call in the prelude to Act III. Much of Humperdinck’s other material so successfully preserved the simplicity of the folk idiom that some of the songs and dances have become part of the popular children’s repertoire in Germany.

In contrast to the mythology and superhuman heroes of Wagner, Humperdinck turned toward a children’s tale from Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. In 1812, the two brothers had published a set of fairy tales, collected from the German people themselves and presented in their simple and dialectal language, often with gory details. Humperdinck and his sister made several fundamental alterations in order to make the characters more humanistic and the story more suitable for a stage performance: the cruel stepmother from Grimm is now the children’s actual mother and does not purposely attempt to lose her children; the Grimm’s cannibalistic witch is transformed into one who prefers life-sized gingerbread cookies; and the fanciful characters of the Sandman and the Dew Fairy are added to the plot. Humperdinck further added a religious dimension with his inclusion of the elaborate guardian angel scene in Act II, the children’s Evening Prayer, and the reunited family giving thanks to God in the final scene. This opera, which showcased Humperdinck’s ability to combine Wagnerian techniques with an authentic German story, folkloristic melodies, and an enchanted atmosphere, appeared at the right time to give a fresh voice to the German opera scene. It is these same qualities that still make Hansel and Gretel endearing today.