Hanna Hipp is an engagingly boyish Hansel, and Christina Gansch a delightful Dew Fairy, complete with watering can. But the Irish soprano Jennifer Davis makes not the slightest effort to be a girly Gr

The star of the show, however, is Gerhard Siegel as the witch, whose gingerbread house is designed to capture the attention of the adult audience by looking like something from Hitchcock's Psycho, with

Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, based on a dark Grimm fairytale, is like a Christmas pudding stuffed with social resonances waiting to be plucked out like old-fashioned threepenny pieces. In recent...

First the good news: the Royal Opera’s new production of Hänsel und Gretel was certainly well sung, if ultimately lacking the sheer memorability of a great performance. Jennifer Davis and Hanna Hip

This is definitely the classy, quality-stamped family show of the season — but, unlike the witch pushed into her own cauldron, it hasn’t quite come to the boil.