Humperdink's Children Hansel u Gretel Making Gingerbread p2

23 Nov 03 Humperdink's Children Hansel u Gretel Making Gingerbread p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104793

Sur La Lune: Hanseel u Gretel
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/hanselgretel/index.html
annotated Hansel

Index of illustrations on Sur La Lune
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/hanselgretel/index.html

Fairytales were ideal for stage adaption in a strictly controlled political world where the extremes of wealth and poverty could not be ignored. Censorship was a state institution, forcing Mozart in an earlier day to rewrite and revise Don Giovanni no less than five times and create a contrived Happy Ending. Opera houses are not private or public concerns, but state controlled. Pressure existed that is invisible today. Using fairytales gave the creators a way of escape and freedom to express what otherwise might not be allowed. Hoffmann produced The Mouse King and the Nutcracker; Strauss, Die Frau Ohne Schatten and Puccini, Turandot. Mahler contributed Das Knaben des Wunderhorn and Das Klagende Lied. All of them, works are derived from children's literature, escaping censorship by allowing the freedom of dreams in a world beset decade after decade with wars, poverty and the ravages of the industrial revolution.

Although Humperdinck is often burdened with the shadow of Wagner, being his editor, he was respected and admired by his contemporaries: Strauss, Reinhadt and Puccini. Nor was he the only composer to adapt "fairytales" for stage. He was deeply influenced by Mozart who wrote translucent works for children and produced the eternal favorite, Zauberflote.

In Vienna, Klimt formed the Secession, breaking away from stylized romantic art and across Europe, Art Noveau became the new movement, allowing myth, fantasy and fairytale to leap into paintings and onto buildings. In England, Oscar Wilde paraded Art for Art's Sake and the Pre-Raphaelites took up position against the traditional school. The golden age of fantasy and artistic expression began spreading throughout Europe, bearing sumptious fruit in the performing and applied arts. Literature followed.

Perhaps, the Grimm story would have dropped from the pages of children's books without the Humperdinck adaptation. The story appeared in the 1812 collection of Grimm's Childrens and Household Tales. The Grimm brothers originally collected the stories to create a compendium of German literature in reaction to the French nationalization and Napoleonic influence. When the stories were first published, parents were offended as they circulated among children. This was not the original intent of the brothers. In response, the stories were edited and changed to make them more suitable for younger readers. Today, school authorities wriggle like cut worms when parents complain. Not much has changed.

D. L Ashliman, Hansel u Gretel
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015a.html
a comparison of changes in the two editions 18112 and 1857

Hansel u Gretel
http://www.ricochet-jeunes.org/eng/biblio/books/hansel.html
bibliography with links to chief illustrators

Why did Humperdinck make the cuts? Stagework has different problems with strict restrictions on time. Humperdinck was not Wagner. Any adaptation of a novel or play has to be compressed to make it work in opera. The audience gets bored easily. In the Grimm version, the children are lost in the woods twice. They hear their parent's discussing the matter before they fall asleep. How many audiences will sit through a repetition of Babes in the Woods? Not many. The composer and librettist make assumptions that the audience knows the conflicts alluded on stage. They presume the audience is intelligent. Writing the parental asides of getting rid of the kids for financial reasons doesn't win sympathy from an audience. The perspective must be altered to bring the audience into the children's world.

However, the terror of being lost and the utter helplessness of being lost is a primal fear of man-- whether the city, woods or life. This creates the tension in both the story and the opera. The allusions and use of allegory extend beyond the children's world of the Witch and the Gingerbread House. All of us dream of being received and loved. All of us long for love and acceptance from a parent, from a father, alluding to fundamental religious understanding in Judaism and Christianity. We fear the night. We fear the dangers of the unknown. And in crisis, we find ourselves helpless against the invisible forces of social pressures or evil that we cannot easily identify. We become dependent on the "angels" about to protect us from harm. We hope that the policeman hears our cry, we hope that the official does not demand the bribe under the table. We rely on those we do not know and pray eversomuch that the doctor is competent when we enter the hospital. And when escaping narrowly from danger, we know no greater happiness than returning safely home, even if only to a damp room with cold fire. We each understand the hapless plight of Hansel and Gretel as they beseech divine protection before they go to sleep...

We hope for the good that comes the next day, to overcome the evil in our life and dream to stuff the horrible witch back into her own oven. So every year, throughout Europe, Hansel u Gretel come alive in the opera house and kids beg their parents to make gingerbread houses.

Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel
http://www.lyricoperaofwaco.org/education/humperdinck/Hansel_and_Grethel.htm
Waco Lyric Opera—program notes with a history and illustrations

Hansel u Gretel
http://www.geocities.com/ehub035/hansel.htm
film production of live opera
polygramophone recording with Fassbaender as Hansel and Gruberova as Gretel
George Solti others: Helga Dernesch, Sena Jurinac, Hermann Prey
very worthwhile recording, sorry does not say which house, but very likely Munich or Vienna State Opera as Fassbaender doesn't like travelling and the cast was also in Vienna

von Stade / Cortrubas would be also very good combination but no info
http://webs.sinectis.com.ar/cpalacios/hansel_files/image003.jpg

http://webs.sinectis.com.ar/cpalacios/hansel_files/image005.jpg
a beautiful set of the opera

Engelbert Humperdinck
http://www.epinions.com/musc_mu-472241
Cast: Brigitte Fassbaender, Lucia Popp, Walter Berry, Julia Hamari, Anny Schlemm.
Wiener Philharmoniker, Sir Georg Solti
very good cast

Bayerisches Staatsoper
http://www.staatsorchester.de/c.php/index_bsoc.php?dom=dom3&l=en
official site has virtual tour
has a Hansel on Program , tribute to Lucia Popp
Zubin Mehta, resident conductor

Vienna Volksoper
http://www.volksoper.at/Content.Node2/home/spielplan/spielplan_detail_werkbeschreibung.php?eventid=321279
double click pictures for enlargement
at the Volksoper—they made special programs with paper ginerbread houses and cut-outs of the sets one year

Larry Ferguson, An Examination of the Structure, Pattern and Hero in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s, Hansel and Gretel
http://www.ed.psu.edu/k-12/edpgs/su95/larry/han&gre.htm

Carrie Dishlip, Hansel and Gretel : Females in Fairytales
http://info-center.ccit.arizona.edu/~ws/ws200/fall97/grp17/hansel.html

Good Housekeeping: Annual Gingerbread House
http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/recipes/holiday/articles/0,12873,284506_290441,00.html
instructions and recipes for gingerbread houses 5 pages

Good Housekeeping: dough
http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/recipefinder/recipe/0,,399536,00.html

Good Housekeeping: frosting
http://magazines.ivillage.com/goodhousekeeping/recipefinder/recipe/0,,392705,00.html

Recipe Link : Holiday Message Board for Gingerbread
http://www.allbaking.net/holiday/gingerbread.html
has cookbooks just for gingerbread houses

Family Fun: Gingerbread House
http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/special/feature/famf1202_feat_firstginger/famf1202_feat_firstginger.html
another recipe for building the gingerbread house

RELATED
&&&&&&&&
23 Nov 03 Humperdinck's Children making Gingerbread p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104795
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/humperdincks-children-making.html

CHRISTMAS STORIES
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
21 Dec 03 Little Match Girl
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105331
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/little-match-girl.html

14^th Dec 03 Fir Tree by HCA
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105215
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/fir-tree.html

16 Nov 03 Nutcracker
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104652
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/nutcracker.html

5 Dec 2004 Kidnapped Santa
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112042

1 December 2004 Winter Festival Event
http://www.suite101.com/event.cfm/277

Humperdinck's Children Making Gingerbread p1

23 Nov 03 Humperdinck's Children Making Gingerbread p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104795

Sur la Lune Hansel and Gretel
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/hanselgretel/index.html

Sur la Lune Illustrations
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/hanselgretel/index.html

Meghan's Fairytales Hansel u Gretel
http://members.tripod.com/meghansfairytale/handg.html
"Hansel and Gretel" Sandcastle books, Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky.

Hansel u Gretel: Deutsch
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/grimm/haensel.html

http://www.fln.vcu.edu/grimm/haensel_grimm.html
1825 illus Ludwig Grimm

Virginia Commonwealth
English translation
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/grimm/haenseleng.html
they have a popup tool bar so you can go from English to German easily
you can also select which illustrator you wish to have: Ludwig Grimm 1825 , Crane 1886, Meyerheim 1889 , Ubbelolide 1907, Richter 1853

Each year, throughout Europe, Hansel und Gretel enter the opera house on the season's programming, adding another Christmas tradition.

In April 1890, Humperdinck was assisting Wolf with the manuscripts for the Morike Lieder. Humperdinck was engaged as a Lecturer and editor of Wagner's works. for the music publisher, Schott u Sohne. He had just completed a successful adaption of D F E Auber's Marchenoper, Das eherne Pferd. His sister, Adelheid, married a a friend, Hermann Wette, who asked Humperdinck to write some music for a children's play, Schneewittchen—Snow White. And in addition to this, Cosima Wagner, wanted him to train her son, Siegfried. He wasn't exactly wanting work. He had more than he needed with people making requests on his time.

Wolf sent a letter, in which he pleaded for a downright cute and folksy tune (etwas recht Hubsches Volkstumlicsches) for a children's Christmas Fest. The Wolf Morike Lieder are extremely short pieces. Many of them are scarcely two minutes long, requiring deft skill of the singer and pianist to create the illusion of innocence as they reflect the naivete of childhood. Wolf was writing sophisticated music with transparent structures on childhood themes: cradle songs, prayers and lullabyes for the Christ Child.They are comparable to William Blake's Songs of Innocence. Humperdinck sent his sister a piece. This became the catalyst for Hansel und Gretel. At the time he composed the dance-duet, "Brother come and dance with me", the Echo-u-Kikerikilied and the Schlummerlied (lullabye) that were performed by children for a private performance in his sister's Salon at Christmas. He didn't have further thoughts on creating any opera on the theme at the time. Cosima Wagner had sent him Gozzi's Der Rabe and he was considering setting Grillparzer's, "Der Traum ein Leben" at the time.

His sister created more text. He set the Sandman's Song and the Evening Prayer. In January 1891, Humperdinck wrote back to Wolf that he was engaged in writing something more on the theme of Hansel u Gretel, but it was taking more time than expected. He wished to see the thing through—but by then, he had realized that he was creating a new opera. The composition took two years to finish. Schott, his publisher and employer, was not very thrilled about it. Schott foresaw no future and refused to publish, allowing him 50 original autographed copies. However, three heavyweights took interest and were impressed: Felix Mottl, Herman Levi and Richard Strauss. The opera opened on December 23, 1893 in the Bayerisches Staatsoper in Munich. The public loved it...and Humperdinck was able to pay his debts. Schott now had reason to print the score. More works were demanded. Following the success of Hansel u Gretel came the Wolf and the Seven Kids and the King's Children, both popular children's stories circulating at the time.

In 1905, Humperdinck packed his bags and arrived in New York City to present Hansel u Gretel in the Metropolitan Opera. Gingerbread Houses became a staple tradition in America and kids sung, "Brother come and dance with me."

Opera
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Hansel u Gretel
http://www.klassikakzente.de/product.jsp?general_id=4550631&mode=product&name=H%E4nsel+und+Gretel
Solti 1978, Fassbaender, Popp and Berry

Hansel u Gretel
http://www.klassikakzente.de/product.jsp?general_id=4211112&mode=product&name=H%E4nsel+und+Gretel
Fassbaender, Popp, Gruberova, Hamari

Bayerisches Staatsoper
http://www.staatsorchester.de/c.php/index_bsoc.php?dom=dom3&l=en
official site has virtual tour
has a Hansel on Program , tribute to Lucia Popp
Zubin Mehta, resident conductor

Vienna Volksoper
http://www.volksoper.at/Content.Node2/home/spielplan/spielplan_detail_werkbeschreibung.php?eventid=321279
double click pictures for enlargement
at the Volksoper—they made special programs with paper ginerbread houses and cut-outs of the sets one year

Hansel and Gretel on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0698114078/ref=ase_meghansfairytale/102-2785169-7166529?v=glance&s=books

on amazon caldecott winner
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0698114078/meghansfairytale/102-2785169-7166529
other classic books are listed

Ginger and Gingerbread
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Glorious ginger.(uses of ginger root)(includes recipes)
An ancient spice that tempts taste buds while taming tummies.
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0820/n253/21034493/print.jhtml
Kathy Farrell-Kingsley, Vegetarian Times, Sept 1998

Gingerberad house
http://dinnercoop.cs.cmu.edu/dinnercoop/Recipes/karen/GingerbreadHouse.html
a recipe and pattern for making a gingerbread house

Gingerbread House by Necco
http://www.necco.com/gingerhouse.htm
second recipe

Gingerbread Man recipe
http://www.janbrett.com/gingerbread_baby_recipe.htm

http://www.janbrett.com/activities_pages.htm
other activities are on this page including a mock gingerbread house pattern and gingerbread icing recipe

Instructions for making a gingerbread house
http://homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/aa120797.htm
from About.com

RELATED
&&&&&&&&
23 Nov 03 Humperdink's Children Hansel u Gretel Making Gingerbread B
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104793
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/humperdinks-children-hansel-u-gretel.html

CHRISTMAS STORIES
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
21 Dec 03 Little Match Girl
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105331
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/little-match-girl.html

14^th Dec 03 Fir Tree by HCA
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105215
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/fir-tree.html

16 Nov 03 Nutcracker
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104652
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/nutcracker.html

5 Dec 2004 Kidnapped Santa
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112042

1 December 2004 Winter Festival Event
http://www.suite101.com/event.cfm/277

Nutcracker

16 Nov 03 Nutcracker
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104652
poached by the cops

Christmas is coming and with it the dreams and fantasies of children, packaged in wrapping paper and bright ribbons to be put beneath the Christmas Tree with trains and teddy bears.

On a blustery cold night, children are heard singing snatches of carols and bits of ballets while little girls imitate the footwork of the Sugar Plum Fairy while waiting for the late night metro on the way home from the theater with their parents.

Certainly, the Nutcracker, is Hoffmann's most beloved work is the Nutcracker, performed across the world in the Tschaikovsky ballet with choreography by Marius Petipa. Ernst Theodore Amadeus Hoffmann published the story of the Mouseking and the Nutcracker (Der Mauskoenig und Der Nussnacker) in 1816. Hoffman was born in the year of the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and died in 1822, overlapping the birth of HC Andersen (1805-1875) and Dickens (1812-1870). His influence can be felt in American Literature through Washington Irving (1783-1859) whose Sketchbook was published in 1819 with the story of Sleepy Hollow which also uses the motif of dream / sleep as a framework to hang a story.

Hoffman was a master of stagecraft from story and playwright to the directorship, using his multi-faceted skills as a desgner, writer and composer. He wrote stories, fairytales and literary essays on contemporary composers in addition to five novels and novella. At the end of his life, he became a lawyer in the Prussian Supreme Court.

The theme of the Nutcracker, the battle royale, reflects Napoleonic Europe with the business of soldiering and building formidable military fortifications, including the notorious Theresienstadt better known as the concentration camp of Terezin, in Czech Republic, originally built to stave off a Prussian invasion.

The success of the Tschaikovsky ballet was inevitable with the combination of the score with the choreography by Marius Petipa. In 1890, Tschaikovsky was commissioned to write the ballet for the Maryinsky Theater based on the French version, Casse-Nioselle, by Dumas fils. he was fifty years old and just completed the successful Sleeping Beauty then in performance in St Petersburg. On December 17, 1892, The Nutcracker Ballet presented a dress rehearsal before Tsar Alexander III, who declared it to be sumptious. On December 18, 1892, it opened with Eduard Napravnik, conductor; Riccardo Drigo, The Nutcracker and Antoinetta Dell'Era, the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Moscow Ballet
http://www.nutcracker.com/nut_history.html
ballet history

Since then it has been a Christmas tradition the world over. In 1986, the Pacific Northwest Ballet presented a film version of Nutcracker using Maurice Sendak's staging and costumes. The book is a popular gift and found on Amazon.

Sendak / PNB at npr
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/dec/nutcracker/011217.nutcracker.html
interview for national public radio with links to PNB

The Nutcracker itself though originates from the region of Sonnenberg and Erzberge near the Bohemian border where there are mines. In winter when the mines closed because of the intense cold, miners turned to wood carving to earn income. The nutcracker soldier reflected the military occupation and historical environment of the Napoleonic era. The nutcrackers were exported from the region asn sold all over Europe. The word, "nussknacker" first appeared in the German dictionary, begun in 1830, compiled by the Grimm Brothers. Surprisingly, they didn't exploit the Hoffmann story for their own inventions. The commercial, mass made production of the nutcracker was established in the region in 1872, twenty years before the Tschaikovsky ballet and today can be bought in the Christmas markets across Germany.

Kirjastro: ETA Hoffmann
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hoffman.htm

Intro to ETA Hoffmann
http://www.petra.demon.co.uk/Hoffmann/introduction.html
http://www.petra.demon.co.uk/Hoffmann/index.html
ETA thesis work

Dr.Heinrich: Hoffmann , King Nut Cracker or The Dream of Poor Reinhold 1845
http://www.polybiblio.com/ursus/94446.html
book history

Story of a Hard Nut
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/hoffmann/nut_e.html

Das Märchen von der harten Nuß
aus "Nußknacker und Mausekönig"
E.T.A. Hoffmann
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/hoffmann/nut.html
German original

Andersen and other Fairytales illus by Segur
http://segur.artpassions.net/

http://www.artpassions.net/
the Index to Art Passions

Can I link to your site?
You can link to any .html page on my site. In fact, I'd like that. Please do not link directly to images. Please do not mirror an entire page on your website.

Please acknowledge her request
do not link directly to images, the rest of use should also like to enjoy the tremendous love of labor involved.

Nutcracker
http://users.htcomp.net/weis/nutcrintro.html
multiple page site dedicated to the Nutcracker

Nutcracker Ballet
http://www.nutcrackerballet.net/
site for info regarding the ballet including links for US Ballets

A historical overview of the American productions of Nutcracker
http://pwp.value.net/~cchris/Nutcracker.html
critical review

Balanchine choreography on film 1993
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107719/

National Ballet of Canada
http://www.national.ballet.ca/Productions/Seasons/2003fall/nutcrackerHistoricalNote.php

Dover Publications
http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-holidays-christmas-nutcracker.html
cut-outs and paraphanalia

brief hist of nutcrackers
http://www.justnutcrackers.com/nutcrackers/nutcrackerhistory.html

Nutcracker history
http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/nutcrack.htm
nutcracker history

CHRISTMAS STORIES
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
21 Dec 03 Little Match Girl
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105331
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/little-match-girl.html

14^th Dec 03 Fir Tree by HCA
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/105215
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/12/fir-tree.html

23 Nov 03 Humperdink's Children Hansel u Gretel Making Gingerbread B
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104793
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/humperdinks-children-hansel-u-gretel.html

23 Nov 03 Humperdinck's Children making Gingerbread A
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/104795
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/humperdincks-children-making.html

5 Dec 2004 Kidnapped Santa
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/112042

1 December 2004 Winter Festival Event
http://www.suite101.com/event.cfm/277

The Silence of Longing p2

The Silence of Longing p2

1 November The Silence of Longing p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104349

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342
reposted on 3d November

Rusalka, a nymph,. inconsolably laments to the moon of her love for the prince. Restricted to the lake and invisibility, she languishes. Although the symbols are similar, there is no hope for Rusalka. The moon is cold, dispassionate and symbolizes infertility. She longs in vain for what can never happen. There will be no redemption for her at the end for the moon can not hear and feels no compassion for her fate. Ironically, the moon is also Diana, the maiden huntress, the goddess who turns Acteon into a deer for his own hounds to tear apart limb from limb because he accidentally trespassed her sacred grove where she bathed. Diana will have no sympathy for a nymph yearning to be held in the arms of a man. The guardian of the lake, the vodnik overhears her misery and despairs. he will lose his fairest daughter. He tries to warn her of the danger, but it only deepens her longing. Like the mermaid, she goes off to find the witch in order to transform herself through magic. Willingly, she suffers self-mutilation in order to gain the prince's attention. Beautiful, she entrances him but as a shadow she hovers on the edge of his life. Without speech there is no means for communication and the prince is soon weary of her transparent beauty. She can only watch as he becomes involved with another woman on their wedding night. Forsaken, she has lost everything. She has lost her life, her people and voice—she has not even the ability to express her dreadful agony.

A fairytale? No, all too real as the roles are reversed in Alben Berg's Wozzeck based on Buchner's work. In agony, tormented by poverty and exploitation, Wozzeck can only watch as the Drum Major and his commander buy sexual favors from Marie. She taunts him with the gleaming earrings given to her by his rival. Marie's child is his, but her affection wanders to whomever has the baubles and words to entice it. Impoverished, Wozzeck works feverishly at odd jobs, indenturing himself to his rivals who exploit his misery to flaunt their control over his life. Shine the captains shoes, shave his beard, cut his wood—the misery knows no end when he sees Marie flirting with them. He can not pay for the toddler's food or for the shoes on his feet. He is at the mercy of those who pay his rent and they take delight in tormenting him. In fury, he kills Marie, but as a soldier, he has no escape. He drowns himself in the lake. He does what the mermaid refused to do. He struck out at the object of his torment and ended his life in the marsh.

In reality, Woyzeck was hung in the Leipzig Marketplace on 27 August 1824. George Buchner was eleven years old. The world was deeply split between the abject poor who lived in the streets and crowded cellars and the insulated rich, who lived behind high walls that surrounded their luxurious villas and palaces, keeping stables within the heart of the city. Their hunting lodges spread over enormous areas. A walk through Schonnbrunn in Vienna or the Star Castle in Prague takes hours to go from gate to gate. Their extensive forests were fenced in by brick walls for their hunting pleasure where even the deer or boar could not escape the cruel call of their horns and the bay of dogs chasing at their heels. With no home and no hope the poor scrabbled for their daily existence outside the walls, in the streets and under the burden of taxation. They escaped through indentured servitued, brutal apprenticeships and military enlistment in a world of the industrial revolution. In 1845, Engels published, the Conditions of the Working Class in England, influencing generation after generation of writers, initiating the novel as a means for social criticism: Disraeli, Dickens, Hardy and D H Lawrence all hinging their works on the plights of the classless poor, the impoverished mute rejected from society.

And although hidden in symbol and allegory, Andersen only transforms the bitter criticism with his pen into a children's fairytale." Like anything magical, take up the mirror and look within to find the bitter reality existing in Andersen's world.

How much Andersen transformed into myth is difficult to say. Surely he never suffered as Dickens did. Andersen had no difficulty in living off the ultra-rich as he moved from benefactor to benefactor for his provision. Dickens, though, never escaped his childhood, bearing poverty on his back all his life, always aware of the misfortunate.

Dvorak, Rusalka with Benackova-Cap
http://www.sdmusic.cz/koi/arcodiva/benackova/
apparently the only recording easily available on the internet
Mackerras in Prague

Alban Berg, Wozzeck
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000001G9D/104-9791498-0399134?v=glance

Wiener Philharmoniker mit Claudio Abbado, Hildegaard Behrens und Franz Grundheber

gibt nichts besserer / brilliant performance

http://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/shopnode/shop/?sid=kOpY6bO0svNCHWk&shopid=3&lng=&productid=72&do=15&amount=1 im Staatsoper Shop

brief bio: Berg
http://www.berkeleysymphony.org/encyclopedia/berg.html

very brief review of 1987 production
http://hallvideo.com/index.php/Mode/product/AsinSearch/B0000016TJ/name/Alban%2520Berg%2520-%2520Wozzeck%2520-%2520Claudio%2520Abbado.htm

I was there...
for envy: Staatsoper plan 2003-2004 season
http://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/Content.Node2/home/spielplan/repertoire_datum_stop.php

"As Good A Murder As You'd Ever Want To See"
Human Reduction in Georg Buchner's Woyzeck
http://www.io.com/~jlockett/Grist/English/woyzeck.html
Joseph L. Lockett, Modern Drama: Ibsen to 1940 20 December 1989

Woyzeck (at the Barbican)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/review/0,1169,801616,00.html
Michael Billington , The Guardian 30 September 2002

Engels, The Conditions of the Working-Class in England, 1845
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/

Karl Marx: The Man of the Century
http://www.swp.ie/resources/KARL%20MARX.htm

Parisian Days: Marx Becomes a Socialist
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Marx/MARXP3.HTML

Open Directory: Engels
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Politics/Socialism/Marxism/Communism/People/Engels,_Friedrich/

Image search "industrial revolution"
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22industrial+revolution%22

Image Gallery for Dickens, David Copperfield
http://www.ellopos.net/gallery/19en/copper_england3.html

Image Gallery for George Cruikshanks illustrations for Dickens
http://images.google.com/images?q=%22George+Cruikshank%22++Dickens&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search

American Society of Poets: Thomas Hardy
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C070408

Representative Poetry Online: Thomas Hardy, The Voice
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem928.html

"Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

 Can it be you that I hear?  Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!"

Sur la Lune- The Little Mermaid
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/index.html

Illustrations at Sur la Lune
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/littlemermaid/index.html

Sur la Lune History
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/history.html

Sur la Lune- related stories hyperlinked
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/other.html

RELATED
&&&&&&&&&
22 June 2003 The Ugly Duckling
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/101567
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/06/ugly-duckling.html

1 December 2004 Nix of Mill Pond
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/112524

3 November Silence of Longing part 2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342

part 2: Rusalka, Berg and literary social criticism
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p2-1-november.html

1 November The Silence of Longing p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104349

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342

reposted on 3d November was deleted
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p2-1-november.html

2 November Silence of Longing Part 1
http://www.suite101.com/articles.cfm/16568
intro

1 November The Silence of Longing p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104352
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p1.html

24 October The Waterline p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104111
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-waterline.html

24 October The Waterline Going Deeper p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104110
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-going-deeper.html

24 October 2003 The Waterline: Drowning p3
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104109
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-drowning.html

The Silence of Longing p1

1 November The Silence of Longing p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104352


Hearing about the beauty of the upper world from her sisters, only increased the longing of the mermaid to rise abover her world. The agony intensified as the years passed with each new story that her elder sisters related. Coming of age, she scorned the prestige of her social position, desiring only that which she could not have. She had no use for the awkward drag on her tail caused by unwanted social status, but only to overreach the limitations of her world to gain an impossible goal.

The mermaid rises to the surface in the evening as a great storm overtakes the sea. The natural imagery foretells the danger of her future. Rising above her world, she enters into the final hours of her life. What she desires can only bring her death, although mermaids have lifespans of three hundred years. The ship is destroyed by the fierce winds. Hearing the terror of the sailors and witnessing their helplessness against the stormy sea, she rescues the prince. Unwittingly, she trades her life for his. There is no possibility for reversal of her fate.

Rescued from the sea, the prince recovers and returns to his normal life. The mermaid is but a whisper of the morning mist as it disperses across the sea. He retains no memory of her embrace. He can not hear her voice or recognize her face among the roaring waves. Mute, she can only watch from the distance as the strand is the fine dividing line between their worlds. Like Psyche, she can only yearn for what she cannot have. She is nothing but a shadow or the wind whisper in across the sands. The old grandmother only intensifies the yearning by explaining that men have mortal souls that live for eternity, but sea-folk transform into the waves afte their lives have ended. Tormented, the mermaid longs to be human, but is rebutted by the grandmother who archly responds that such things can never be: " it is only possible if someone were to love and accept her more than a father or mother and to take his hand in his before a priest..." The conflict is set. No one would ever want her. A fish can not live on land. Something must be sacrificed to gain the object of her love: her family, her identity, her people, and her voice are all cut off with the beautiful tail. The sacrifice are made in the desperate hope of being loved and accepted by someone who can not see her presence.

So love is mute. It watches and feels what it can not express. Andersen allows redemption for his mermaid through her willingness for self-sacrifice. Although the tragedy is set, the audience is consoled with inspiration of a better world in his closing. In other versions of the story, there is none.

Sur la Lune- The Little Mermaid
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/index.html

Illustrations at Sur la Lune
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/littlemermaid/index.html

Sur la Lune History
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/history.html

Sur la Lune- related stories hyperlinked
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/other.html

RELATED
&&&&&&&&&
22 June 2003 The Ugly Duckling
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/101567
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/06/ugly-duckling.html

1 December 2004 Nix of Mill Pond
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/112524

3 November Silence of Longing part 2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342

part 2: Rusalka, Berg and literary social criticism
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p2-1-november.html

1 November The Silence of Longing p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104349

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342

reposted on 3d November was deleted
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p2-1-november.html

2 November Silence of Longing Part 1
http://www.suite101.com/articles.cfm/16568
intro

1 November The Silence of Longing p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104352
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p1.html

24 October The Waterline p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104111
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-waterline.html

24 October The Waterline Going Deeper p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104110
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-going-deeper.html

24 October 2003 The Waterline: Drowning p3
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104109
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-drowning.html