Seattle Opera’s Production of Hansel & Gretel Gets a Comedic Twist
Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel Returns To Seattle Opera
By Jim Demetre October 6, 2016
This article originally appeared in the October 2016 issue of Seattle magazine.
German composer Engelbert Humperdinck’s folk-tune-influenced adaptation of the famously dark Grimm Brothers fairy tale from 1812 has not been seen at Seattle Opera for 23 years.
But this October, Halloween comes early to McCaw Hall with the return of this musical drama of starvation, sorcery, cannibalism and bravery. French director Laurent Pelly’s fantastical 2008 Glyndebourne Opera Festival production, which takes place in the aisles of the Witch’s shopping-mall residence after the lost brother and sister’s parents are reduced to living in a cardboard box, is a richly imagined, comedic and horror-ridden critique of the consumerism that pervades our contemporary culture.
German with subtitles. October 15-30. Times and prices vary. Seattle Opera, McCaw Hall, Seattle Center, 321 Mercer St.; 206.389.7676; seattleopera.org
Follow Us
AANHPI Month: Where to Celebrate, Eat, and Learn Around Seattle
From festivals and museum exhibits to food tours and historic neighborhoods, here are a few ways to mark the month across the region.
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month—known as AANHPI Month—is observed in the U.S. each May. It began as a weeklong observance in 1978 and expanded to the full month in 1992. Asian, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in the United States extend back much further, including to the late 16th century, when…
Black Panther Park in Skyway Becomes First Black Panther Park in the World
The new community garden honors the Black Panther Party’s legacy of food justice and the Skyway neighbors who helped bring it to life.
On a sunny Sunday earlier this month, at the corner of 75th Avenue and Renton Avenue South, the community gathered for the opening of Skyway’s Black Panther Park. Inspired by the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for School Children program that compelled the federal government to provide breakfast in schools, Black Panther Park is a community…
Rearview Mirror: A Family Coming Apart, SIFF, and My First Fashion Show
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
The Family House A house can hold a lot, and Seattle Rep’s Appropriate knows that. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony-winning play, directed here by Timothy McCuen Piggee, drops the Lafayette siblings into their late father’s hoarded, falling-apart Arkansas plantation home for an estate sale, and lets the whole thing crack open from there. The sibling dynamics are…
Studio Sessions: Raili Jänese
The Kirkland painter brings a playful eye to daily life and the little rituals of being human.
Artist Raili Jänese pays close attention to the small stuff. It might be a goose on the move, a rabbit in the yard, or a person lost in the rituals of coffee or cooking. The Estonian-born artist, now based in Kirkland, makes colorful acrylic works that turn everyday behavior—human and animal alike—into something funny and…