Königskinder

He achieved world fame with Hansel and Gretel, and his subsequent fairytale opera Königskinder impressively confirmed the high artistic standing of composer Engelbert Humperdinck. Originally designed as a melodrama, he reworked the work into a large-scale, well-composed opera, which had its successful premiere at the New York Metropolitan Opera at the end of 1910 and was heard and seen for the first time just a few weeks later at the Unter den Linden Opera House.

A wide variety of fairy tale motifs have been incorporated into the otherwise fictional plot, with high symbolic value and poetic magic. The characters who appear on stage are profoundly human, free in their thinking and yet caught in constraints, and at the same time involved in a game of great emotions. With the countless timbres of the late Romantic orchestra and an immense intensity of expression, the Königskinder score has special musical qualities, which are revived by the Staatskapelle Berlin and its general music director Christian Thielemann.