The Circus Comes To Town

Following the success of last year’s productions of The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute, Opera Warwick’s first production this year promises even bigger and better things. With a student-translated and written script in collaboration with profession opera composer Kit Hesketh-Harvey, a 45-piece orchestra and a cast of a hundred schoolchildren, Hansel and Gretel is to be no small feat. Katherine Price talks to Conductor Ben Hamilton and one cast’s Hansel, Charlotte Ireland, about the re-invention of this classic fairytale.

**Ben Hamilton, Conductor

Who originally came up with the idea of doing Hansel and Gretel?
**
It’s really hard to find an opera that’s good for students to perform and this is a really difficult piece calling for some really advanced vocal technique as well as dramatic technique but it’s got a small number of characters and is nice and self-contained and it feels like the next challenge. And it’s particularly interesting because the story is very traditional and, in some sense, our treatments of The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro were novel, we tried to modernise it, make it appropriate to people who had never seen an opera before so that they could enjoy it and it gave us the chance to completely re-envisage Hansel and Gretel.

**And you translated it yourselves?**

Yes, Kit Hesketh-Harvey has established a kind of relationship with us where he gave us, freely, his translations of The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, to encourage us, basically. And so when we decided to do Hansel and we couldn’t find a great, modern translation that was funny enough or appropriate to a student audience, and so we decided to ask Kit if he would help us, essentially, to write a translation. Five fabulous people translated it from German into English and then some 20 people were involved in the drafting of the translation, and then a smaller group of us spent a couple of weekends, five days in all, with Kit just polishing it to make it work well with the music, whilst learning a lot from Kit in the process, which was the most exciting bit.

**Would you say that opera is still accessible and relevant today?**

I think opera is more accessible and relevant today, particularly with what we’ve tried to do. Everything about what we do is to try to make it accessible, not to dumb it down in any way, but to bring out the real drama in the music by placing it in a new setting and by focusing our singers’ interpretation or how they present the story, not on producing just a piece of music, and so our strong emphasis is making it accessible. We all think that the stuffy, Victorian approach to opera is outdated where it has got to be a beautiful piece of art with no real soul, and so we’ve completely and utterly updated so that it’s appropriate to students, children, people that have never seen an opera before and, quite frankly, what better story can you get than Hansel and Gretel to introduce people to a new art form?

**Charlotte Ireland, Hansel

Tell us a bit about your character, and how they have changed from the original concept?**

Hansel is a Tiny Gangster, plain and simple.  He’s a street-wise kid living in crippling poverty with his big sister whom he worships and get’s into lots of trouble with.  He has a lot of worries for an 8 year old kid, but manages to escape into his imagination at all possible moments. True to the original Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel, he is obsessed with food – and it is the promise of it that leads him into life-threatening danger – but in this version the fabled wicked witch becomes the Ringmaster from the seedy yet alluring travelling circus.  It is an absolute joy having the responsibility of stepping into the shoes of this little guy – every rehearsal turns into playtime and exploring the physicality of a tiny child has been not only incredibly rewarding but lots of fun too!

**How does this opera differ from others you’ve done? Does having a script translated and written by students make a difference?**

Having been involved in every process of the project, from the development of a concept to the culmination of everything on opening night, it’s been great seeing the show take form.  Having our own translation is invaluable as we are able to change anything and everything that isn’t working in the rehearsal process without having to worry about things like copyright infringement getting in the way of our artistic vision!  Also, on a more personal level, I had so much input in the writing of Hansel’s text, that I felt I knew him before I even started to look at the music seriously – and this has been incredibly useful in getting my character (as well as his thoughts, feelings, dreams) on its feet.

**And why should people come and see Hansel and Gretel?**

Because it’ll be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.  This show is without doubt everything that opera should be – a culmination of all art forms working together and informing each other to make a product better than its individual parts.  We have incredible musicians, actors, dancers, designers, artists, directors, and writers involved in this production, and every single one of them is invaluable. Basically, we’ll make you laugh, we’ll make you cry (believe me, we’ve already done this with our director!) and we’ll definitely change your opinion of what an opera should be.

_Hansel and Gretel is on at Warwick Arts Centre Thursday 12- Saturday 14 January. Tickets can be bought from the Arts Centre Box Office: 024 7652 4524._