Engelbert Humperdinck (that is, the original Engelbert Humperdinck) wrote an opera based on the fairy tale of Hänsel and Gretel to a libretto by his sister Adelheid Wette in 1891 and 1892.

In the process Frau Wette cleaned up the story quite a bit to take some of the terrors out of the original Grimm tale. So no wicked step mother throwing the children out of the house, no trail of bread crumbs for the birds to eat.

Instead, the children belong to a loving but poor family, and the mother unthinkingly sends them out into the forest to gather berries after they break her only jar of milk. They end up getting lost as usual though, and they spend the night in the forest.

Which leads to one of the most beautiful scenes in all of opera.

After a visit from the Sandman, the children grow sleepy and say their evening prayers, then lie down and fall asleep and dream..

The excerpt here is from the traditional Metropolitan Opera production that was broadcast in the early 1980s. It was performed in an English language translation with Judith Blegen as Gretel, Frederica von Stade as Hänsel, and Thomas Fulton conducting.

This production has since been replaced by a monstrosity, and I don’t even want to try to detail the horrors that the stage director has devised to replace what the librettist described in her stage directions. Just be glad we have the video of this production.

One note: In the original German the children pray for 14 angels (vierzehn Engel) to protect them as they sleep, but the English translation is very free and instead goes in the direction of “Now I lay me down to sleep, pray, dear lord, my soul to keep”.

No matter. The prayer is very short. It’s the orchestral postlude that depicts their dream that is truly transcendent music. Humperdinck was an admirer of Wagner and he learned his lessons well.

By the way, when you saw the title of this post, “14 Angels”, did you think this was going to be about religion?