ABOUT THE COMPOSER: ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK

Engelbert Humperdinck was born on September 1, 1854 in Germany. He received piano lessons at the age of seven and created his first compositions. His parents encouraged him to study architecture, however he decided to pursue music at the Cologne Conservatory. He received the Frankfurt Mozart Prize in 1876 and with the money was able to travel to Munich to continue his musical studies. Over the next ten years, he met many influential composers including Richard Wagner. He became one of Wagner's students and assistants, eventually tutoring Wagner's son Siegfried.

Humperdinck had a very successful teaching career and had a productive collaboration with playwright/director Max Reinhardt. He composed incidental music for several Shakespearean productions in Berlin. While he was in Berlin, his sister Adelheide Wette asked him to compose incidental music for a play she was creating for her children based on the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. By the way, in her version she substantially altered the rather harsh aspects of the fairy tale to present a gentler, less monstrous picture of the parents. In 1890, Humperdinck began to work on the project, composing sixteen songs for his sister’s play version along with piano accompaniment. He was so pleased by these pieces that he gave his fiancée a copy of them as an engagement present. A short time later, he decided to turn Hansel and Gretel into a full opera and he began working on the rich, Wagner-inspired orchestration.

Three years later, Richard Strauss conducted its premiere in Weimar proclaiming the work "a masterpiece" and "authentically German." Using Wagner's ‘leit-motif’ techniques and traditional German folk music, Humperdinck created a new kind of opera that combined sophistication with simple folk elements. It gained instant popularity all over Europe.

In 1912, Humperdinck suffered a severe stroke which left his left hand permanently paralyzed. In 1915, he began to work on his final theatrical piece, Gaudeamus, with his son Wolfrom and it was completed in 1918. On September 26, 1921, he attended his son's first production of Carl Maria Von Weber's Der Freischutz. Unfortunately, during the performance he suffered a heart attack and the very next day.

Hansel and Gretel became such an overwhelming success that it was the first complete opera radio broadcast from the stage Covent Garden in London and eight years later it was  broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera. Today, Hansel and Gretel is still performed regularly throughout the world, often around the Christmas holidays.