The casting of the radiant Helen Donath as Gretel, the theatrical Christa Ludwig as the witch, the vibrant Anna Moffo as Hansel, and the noble but lovable Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as the father would have been sufficient to secure this recording's fame as the best version of "Hansel and Gretel" ever committed to disc. However, to cast Lucia Popp as the Dew Fairy and Arleen Auger as the Sandman was a master stroke. And, the excellent Charlotte Berthold is an added bonus as the mother. Leading this array of vocal riches, Kurt Eichhorn produces a reading that accentuates the detail and color of the score more than any other, drawing out the richness of the orchestration with astonishing success.
If there is such a thing as a classic Christmas opera, it is Hansel and Gretel. Like hardly anyone else, Humperdinck succeeded here in combining popular melodies with the technical sophistication of sophisticated compositional art. Even before the opera, he published a shorter version as a fairy tale game, which, like an essence of the opera, exposes its essential design principles.