There is nothing as wholesome as a bowl of oatmeal on a winter Sunday morning. It fills your body and soul with comfort and energy. 

When I was a kid, I could not stand “hot cereal.”  No amount of bribery could convince me to eat it.  Perhaps my childhood abhorrence stemmed from the fact that my mother always made instant hot cereal from a packet, or the New York City public school breakfasts served starchy cement.  It was not until my mid-20s, when my ex-fiancée forced me to try it again, that I developed a love of oatmeal.

For quite a while, Steel Cut Irish Oats were my hot cereal of choice,. I loved the pebbly taste of each grain surrounded by starchy goodness.  However, lately, I have discovered Bob’s Red Mill cereals.  They are delicious and chock full of vitamins, nutrients and fiber.

As I sit here on this cold January morning, enjoying my bowl of warm comfort and watching the golden sunrise through the barren trees, I cannot help but think back to last night’s performance.

My brother and I went to the Metropolitan Opera to see Hansel and Gretel.  A relatively new Opera, Engelbert Humperdink wrote Hansel and Gretel based on the Grimm’s fairy tale.  However, he turned it into a dark social commentary much like Bertold Brecht transformed the Beggar’s Opera (a 17th Century opera from the U.K.) into the Three Penny Opera of the 1920s Berlin.  Humperdinck wrote the Hansel and Gretel Opera in German (athough this performace was in English), in thee acts.

The opera opened with a screened backdrop painted to illustrate an empty plate, fork and knife.  Inside the plate, we could make out a frightening reflection of a human face.  The style of this painting reminded me of Pink Floyd The Wall.

Within the opening scene, we found two starving children that were dancing to stave off their hunger.  They had a jug of cream on top of a cupboard that each one tried hard not to eat.

First, the mother came home and threatened to beat them for not doing their chores, then chased them around the house until one of them accidentally broke the milk jug, spilling out their only morsels of food.  So, the mother sent them into the woods to pick berries while she contemplated suicide.
 
Well, the children wander off through the haunted wood.  The father come home with a bag full of food and they begin to cook and eat.  He then chastises the wife for banishing the children and they wander off to find them

Act two begins with a darker, scarier rendition of the same painting, but with motion blurring around the knife and fork (as though they were in use) and blood staining the plate.  Act two describes their journey through the haunted wood, a dream of a feast with fourteen angels that look like giant chefs setting a formal dinner table, and a bewitchment by a creepy sandman.

The height of act two is when they find the gingerbread house. In this performance, the Met created the gingerbread house as a large chocolate cake rolling around the stage on what looked like a stretcher with a glossy tongue for a bed.  The screen came down again while the children sang their song and revealed a red screen with an open mouth in the center (again, much like Pink Floyd The Wall) and the floating cake on a stretcher/ glossy tongue sat in the center of the mouth.

In act three, the children encounter the witch and find themselves faced with chocolate, cakes, candies, and junk food galore.  All around the set were hollow wooden cutouts representing the children she had eaten before. 

I found striking similarities to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that the author of said novel had found inspiration from Humperdinck’s opera.

The most compelling scene, with the most outstanding performance, took place in Act Three, between the witch and the children.  Much like the Grimm’s fairy tale, the children wantonly nibbled and ate the witch’s house.  Once captured, she manically fed and fed them… fattening them up to feed herself.

Once Gretel pushed the witch into the oven, the screen came down to portray a broken plate.  Then the hollow wooden children became live children, returned from the dead by the witch’s demise.

This dark commentary puzzled and disturbed me all the way home.  I picked up my book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales at midnight and began to read the original story of Hansel and Gretel. 

What haunts me from this performance is “Where is the line between starvation and gluttony?” 

The brother’s Grimm lived in a world where poor and working class faced starvation at any downturn of luck.  They worked hard physical labor every day and had a close connection to their food source.  Today, (in the U.S.) we live in an opposite environment.  Many poor and working class people sit at a desk all day.  We are completely disconnected from our food sources.  The cheapest foods are nutritionally devoid and overly processed.

I now look to Joseph Campbell for deeper understanding of archetypes in fairy tales.  Like most “hero’s journeys,” Our protagonists begin as children that are pushed out of their comfort zone on an unknown journey.  Throughout their travels, they overcome many otherworldly encounters, i.e., entering the haunted wood.  In European folklore, the presence of birds usually indicates a journey into otherworldly realms.  So, when the birds ate all the crumbs that Hansel left out as a trail to find his way home, it was out signal in the story that they can not return.

The hero must then face and overcome an otherworldly demon (in this case a witch) and avoid consumption of food

Once the hero overcomes his challenge, he may return home, all the wiser, and touched by the other world ever after.

I am not sure if there is a point to my morning ramblings, but thank you for indulging me as I convey my feelings on this compelling and disturbing opera.