Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel: Top 5 Musical Moments

The first number of the opera, sung by Hansel and Gretel when they should be doing their chores, is an authentic folksong from the German region of Brandenburg. A gaggle of barefoot goslings asks a cobbler for shoes, but he doesn’t have the right tool to make them. This catchy little tune serves as the musical basis for the opening scene—you can hear it repeated dozens of times in the orchestra.

This interlude is a wild orchestral depiction of the Witch flying about hunting for children. The central musical idea is taken from Father’s Act I aria, where he sings it on the word “broomstick.” Listen for the rattling tambourines and clicking castanets, as well as the swirling string runs that Humperdinck borrowed from Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”

Gretel sings this gentle nursery rhyme as she makes a daisy chain in the forest. Its text, by German poet August Heinrich Hoffmann, is actually a riddle. The little man with a red cloak and black cap is a rosehip—the fruit of the rosebush. The song was featured in the 2007 horror film Hannibal Rising, a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs.

The most famous number from the opera, this radiant duet is Hansel and Gretel’s bedtime prayer. Their heavenly harmonies rise heavenward as they ask for 14 angels to guard them while they sleep. At the end of the opera, the children’s father takes up the tune to sing his hopeful motto: “When in need or dark despair, God will surely hear your prayer.”

The Witch’s song is an example of a peppy, polka-like dance called a “galop.” You’ll recognize the melody from the Witch’s Ride, where it’s first introduced by the orchestra. In the nonsense lyrics, she orders her magic broomstick around like a horse and then recites some impossible math equations: “nine is one, and ten is none!”