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7 Fantastic Facts about Fairy Tale Opera Hansel and Gretel
  1. Hansel and Gretel is a fairy tale published by the Brothers Grimm that is centered on the travails of a brother and a sister; the ever-popular operatic version consists of a libretto by Adelheid Wette and music by Engelbert Humperdinck who, were in fact, brother and sister!
  2. Although Hansel and Gretel is one of the most oft-performed operas in the world, it began its life as a few songs for child’s birthday party
  3. It was such a success that in 1923 it became the first complete opera ever to be broadcast on radio (from Covent Garden, London), and
  4. Eight years later on the afternoon of Christmas day, 1931, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel was the first radio broadcast from the Metroploitan Opera in New York City – a series that has continued uninterrupted to this day.
  5. Although Humperdinck made eight more attempts at opera, he failed to create a work even remotely as successful (although Königskinder, another fairy-tale opera, deserves some attention).
  6. This opera, based upon a fairy tale, bridged the gap between the great giants of German Romantic opera: composer Humperdinck was chosen by Richard Wagner to assist in his last self-produced operas at Bayreuth; Richard Strauss, who had yet to achieve success on the operatic stage, conducted the world premiere of Hansel and Gretel in Munich in the year 1893 and dubbed it "a masterpiece of the highest quality… all of it original, new, and so authentically German." (Wagner’s son Siegfried called it “the most important opera since Parsifal”)
  7. Its actual first performance on December 23, 1893 was close enough to December 25 to instantly establish it as “the Christmas Opera,” even though there is no actual allusion to the Day.