★★★☆☆
The Royal Opera House packs ’em in every winter with the ballet classic The Nutcracker. What the company has never cracked is how to get the tills rattling year after year for a Christmas opera. Now comes another new production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, featuring the Grimm brothers’ familiar siblings, enchanted gingerbread children and a very hungry witch.
It could yet be the show that gives your little opera buffs-in-training a treat they’re going to want to come back to. Directed and designed by Antony McDonald, the picture-perfect sets look enchanting as we travel to the Black Forest in the early 19th century — not coincidentally the era when Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were yomping around Europe looking for material.
Here’s