This DVD of Humperdink's enchanting opera Hansel and Gretel is the Mets classic storybook staging as performed on Christmas Day 1982
No singers today play Hansel and Gretel more convincingly or sing them more enchantingly [than Frederica von Stade and Judith Blegen]. New York Daily News.
This classic Met production cheerfully evokes a magic world of woodland sprites and candy dreams, wrote the New York Post reviewer, praising Eliass broadly comic witch, Blegens merry and nimble Gretel, and von Stades vocal majesty and dramatic integrity as Hansel. Even the sourest Scrooge or Grinch, said the New York Times, would have to smile when the witch is bested (and basted) and the stage suddenly fills with her revived victims: a beaming bevy of children in dapper folk-tale costume.