LITTLE ROCK — In the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” a trail of bread crumbs threatens to turn into a trail of gingerbread crumbs as a pair of precocious and peripatetic children encounter a forest-dwelling nibble witch looking to bake them into cookies.
Engelbert Humperdinck — the 19th-century German composer and not the 20th-century singer who adopted the stage name — turned the story into an opera with same title.
And the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Opera Theatre will stage a somewhat abbreviated version of Hansel and Gretel — in English — at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall, Fine Arts Building, UALR, 2801 S. University Ave., Little Rock.
“This year at UALR we have some world-class singers as students that you will see someday on major opera stages. They’re all in this production and it will be a real delight to hear them,” says former Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Diane Kesling, now an assistant professor of music at UALR and head of the Opera Theatre, who is directing the UALR production.
Bevan Keating, associate professor of music, will conduct the singers and a two-keyboard-and-percussion pit band.
Tickets are $15, $5 for students and children, free for UALR faculty, staff and students; call (501) 569-8993 or visit ualr.edu/music. For more information, call the UALR music department at (501) 569-3294.
Weekend, Pages 35 on 10/27/2011