Let’s face it, I acquired the taste for opera many moons ago, but my 10 year old? She half-slept through one a few years back. Opera North ’s new production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel transformed all that, with the flick of a camera phone and a smattering of Haribo.

It’s so damned good, I could happily have burst into tears at the approach to the interval. It conjures up a deliciously 21stt Century concept and bewitches us all with such fabulous technical witchery I thought I’d arrived in heaven via a projector.

With the impeccably performed overture performed in darkness, conducted by Christoph Altstaedt, making his Opera North debut we are introduced to the themes and musical motifs which we are to meet in the story in an accessible way. By Act 3, my daughter was really getting a sense for the orchestral sound, enjoying its individual voices, having fallen in love with the radical, highly sophisticated treatment of the story. Creative choices remove anything too mawkish for modern tastes, so the traumpantomime with dancing angels is out and a sinister seaside dream is in.

It is a bold retelling, in which our relationship with reality is filtered through layers of reference. The ‘children’ Hansel, performed by Katie Bray and his sister Gretel by Fflur Wyn use a handheld camera from the outset, the results projected with stunning effect on the walls of their shabby flat walls. The solid set changes little, but the space transforms entirely via projections into the wood and the witch’s home thanks to superb work from Video Designer Ian William Galloway.

The Creative team, including Galloway, Giles Cadle, Set Designer and Director Edward Dick have given the story a brave new landscape which leaves one breathless in its ingenuity. The treatment, like the best fairy stories, is dark, with elements of Blair Witch and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and asks many question, gives few answers. I won’t spoil it because you WILL see it, right and take your children, any children too. We come away trusting only the young, thanks to a succession of broken, sinister adults.

My representative for the youth of today is now bewitched by opera and can’t wait to see more. I owe Opera North a lot of sweets.

It is at the Theatre Royal again on Saturday evening.