Roman Trekel and Anna Samuil clicked nicely together as Gunther and Gutrune feeling the heat, intimidation and brute-force of Hagen who chilled the air just by his presence...
Moreover, the grandeur and ambition of work, production, and orchestral performance notwithstanding, not to forget the work of the excellent chorus, there was something winningly intimate, in the opéra comique tradition to what we saw and heard from the singers on stage. That is not to suggest a lack of vocal scale, but simply to point to their convincing performances as characters on stage. If Roman Trekel and Wolfgang Schöne both proved somewhat dry and stiff, the rest of the cast more than compensated. Peter Sonn’s Max was fresh toned, enthusiastic, vulnerable, Falk Struckmann’s Kasper very much his dark, virile antagonist (even, in this context, alter ego?) Anna Samuil gave perhaps the strongest performance I have heard from her as Agathe, exhibiting a fine sense, scenic and vocal, of tragic catastrophe before the last. Anna Prohaska’s more colourful, spirited Ännchen, despatched words and coloratura not only with ease but with intent and meaning. Performed in this new ‘version’ without an interval, the work emerged, Goldilocks-like, just right: neither too short nor too long. That, however, should remain a dark fairy-tale for another day.
Ricarda Merbeth verkörperte eine Elektra, die in ihren eigenen Gedanken gefangen ist. Schon mit den Rufen nach „Agamemnon“ ergriff sie die Herzen des Publikums. Ihre starke Stimme mit großem Vibrato, kann nicht nur markerschütternd sein, sondern auch überraschend fein und warm, als sie die Rückkehr ihres Bruders Orest besang. Sie wurde immer mehr zur Elektra und selbst in den hohen Lagen war sie gut zu verstehen.
And Sebastian Weigle, once the horn player of the Staatskapelle, now leads the opera as a conductor with a deep understanding of the forest romance and the sensitivity of the fairy tale tone: he places the orchestra's most cautious pianissimo under the enchantingly clear voices of Katrin Wundsam as Hansel and Elsa Dreisig as Gretel. "
That is certainly the greatest architectural and acoustic treasure of this house: proximity. In Achim Freyer's production of “Hansel and Gretel” you sit inside a child's heart. It is a dark room of dreams and lust, of fear and wishes, of a fantasy that gives birth to the monstrous: a garden spider as God in heaven, a giant cat with white mice sticking to its tongue, and a witch with sausage lips and a coffee cup hat.