‘Hansel and Gretel’ Is Catnip for Kids

Washington National Opera Artistic Director Francesca Zambello has said she wants to bring young audiences to WNO by staging productions during the holidays specifically geared toward them.

A second WNO go at composer Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel,” based on the popular Grimm Brothers fairy-folk tale, ought to be just the ticket. It runs through Dec. 20 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

Fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm still attract young children in droves to movie theaters, Broadway and theme parks (just ask the Disney corporate world), and “Hansel and Gretel,” which opened WNO’s holiday series four years ago, seems ideally suited to bring in adults with children in tow.

“Hansel and Gretel” has something that regular opera fans really appreciate. Gorgeous music throughout, it’s a listenable opera with the kind of score — complicated, often lush, diverse — that satisfies adult operagoers. As for the kids, well, just watch them. Beside the title characters, loving but sometimes battling siblings who go into the dark forest in search of food (not always plentiful in their household), there are the struggling parents, Peter and Gertrude; the Sandman; the Dew Fairy; a non-speaking but quite fearsome owl; and of course the Witch.

The witch is played in let-it-all-hang-out fashion by American soprano Kerriann Otaño, who hits the high notes in reckless, cackling fashion. Apparently as starved, nearly, as her prey, she moves around the stage as if powered by an Eveready Energizer, dolled up like one of the evil sisters from “Cinderella.” She is, as required, equal parts scary and funny, and as colorful as human fireworks.

There is a reason, of course, that fairy tales remain fodder for operas, ballets and dances, novels, plays and children’s theater. The stories themselves never get too old or old-fashioned and are pliable to reworking and making contemporary. There are today two network television series drawing on the Grimm name and the brothers’ stories and characters.

“Hansel and Gretel” is fairly simple: the siblings get lost in the woods, their parents search for them, they are captured by the witch who intends to bake them into gingerbread and the children — quite a bit more clever than they seem at first — outsmart the wicked witch and push her into the oven. Children and parents are reunited, the gingerbread children become children again and all’s well that ends well.

This sort of thing, when done and staged as well as this production is, is catnip for kids. Directed at a speed mindful of its potential audience, the two-hour affair moves along in spritely fashion, all the while never stinting the musical quality of the opera — and it is a full-length opera. The sets by Robin Vest and the costumes by Timm Burrow are a visual delight.

Mezzo-soprano Aleksandra Romano as Hansel was strong-voiced while soprano Ariana Wehr not only sang Gretel to perfection but played her with a winsome, coquettish, bright-eyed charm. Most impressive vocally was Russian American tenor Aleksey Bogdanov, who sang joyfully and with great authority.

The audience — and it’s fair to say that around half the audience was made up of children — was a great barometer of the steadfast appeal of the opera. We watched two sisters, eight or nine years old, sitting intently interested on the edge of their seats throughout the proceedings, sharing a set of small opera glasses