9 days to the Hansel premiere!

The Hansel and Gretel performance on New Year’s Day will be the second of this season’s HD transmissions (which kicked off today with Roméo et Juliette). On Christmas day 76 years ago, a mere decade after the composer’s death, Humperdinck’s opera launched the Met’s Saturday Matinee Broadcast series, a tradition that continues to this day. Pictured below are, from left to right, the President of NBC, Merle H. Aylesworth (whose network carried the broadcast), announcer Deems Taylor, conductor Karl Riedel, Henriette Wakefield (Gertrude), Dorothee Manski (Witch), Editha Fleischer (Hansel), Queena Mario (Gretel), Gustav Schützendorf (Peter), Pearl Besuner (Dew Fairy), and General Manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza, who seems to be hiding his delight behind his trademark smirk.

Photo: Metropolitan Opera Archives

This entry was posted by Philipp Brieler on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 6:25 am and is filed under New Production Countdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.