"The wolf befriends Little Red Riding Hood in wonderful youth opera"

Anita Twaalfhoven | Trouw, 16.10.22

"Here comes the wolf! The very angry wolf! Hunt him, boil him. Hunt him, roast him. We chop him into little pieces." In the youth opera The Girl, the Hunter and the Wolf, the danger comes from the hunters. Not from the wolf, who is mostly sad and he longs for the moon.

The National Opera, in collaboration with LOD music theatre, presents a beautiful, compact opera that sheds new light on the role of the wolf in well-known fairy tales. Singers and musicians sing and perform around a schematically designed set, in which a wide tray of earth depicts the dark forest. The wolf can dig in, the hunters hide in the bushes and a single door is the home of the piglets and Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother. The battle takes place between the wolf and the hunters who drive up the hungry animal.

A waterfall of sound and music

Countertenor Arturo den Hartog's hairy wolf mask and nimble stealth make him an intriguing character who is half-man, half-wolf. In his melancholic singing, weeping can be heard in elongated exclamations. His counterpart mezzo-soprano Leonie van Rheden is therefore a powerful hunter who scares the hell out of him in staccato sung phrases.

Vasco Mendonça's composition is a cascade of contemporary music, sounds and sound effects that give the performance a strong emotional charge. The musicians play on cello, clarinet, percussion and electric guitar at the back of the forest, enhancing the magical atmosphere.

Red Riding Hood as a backpacker

The three piglets - there are only two here - also join in. When the hunters turn around, we see their big pink backs with a curly tail. The wolf looks longingly at the full meat, but even though he is so hungry, he does not harm a piglet. He is good friends with Little Red Riding Hood. She is therefore a self-reliant girl who strides through the forest with a big backpack like a backpacker. Soprano Sabra El Bahri-Khatri sings along with the wolf in a dance-like rhythm and is the only one who really makes contact with him.

The surtitles of the Dutch-sung opera seem like a continuous poem because of the short, poetic sentences. Gonçalo Tavares wrote a libretto with multiple layers of meaning. The children understand that this wolf does little wrong and is blamed for everything. "I am not hunting you because you are bad, but because I am afraid," says the hunter. Parents and grandparents have their own associations with the fear of the other or the unknown leading to aggression and persecution.

Even though the text exposes the meaning of the fairy tale, the open-ended ending keeps the mystery alive. The wolf howls at the moon and hopes to find his home there.

read original (Dutch) here