Die Königskinder (The King's Children)

by Engelbert Humperdinck (1854 - 1921).
Märchenoper in three acts. 1910.
Expanded from the earlier melodrama of 1897.
Libretto by Ernst Rosmer (Else Bernstein-Porges).
First performance at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, on 28th December 1910.

CHARACTERS

In the forest the goose-girl, a princess under a spell, serves the witch. The prince meets her and they fall in love. A broom-maker and a woodcutter come, with a fiddler, to find out from the Witch who will be King and she tells them the first person to enter the gates of the city after the bells have rung for noon the next day. The fiddler, with whom the other two have not shared their reward from the townspeople, helps the goose-girl break the witch's spell. The next day the townsfolk are excitedly awaiting the arrival of their king. The prince has stayed in the town, engaged as a swineherd by the innkeeper. As the bells ring, the city gates are opened and the goose-girl comes in, greeted by the prince, but the people are angry, thinking they have been cheated, and drive the couple away. In the third act the fiddler is in the forest, living in the witch's hut. The broom-maker, with the children of the town, comes to the hut to persuade the fiddler to return, and he, with the children, sets out to find the prince and princess. Starving, the two approach the witch's hut, begging bread in exchange for the prince's crown. This they are given, but the bread is the magic poisoned bread that the witch had made, and the prince and princess die, to be found there by the children and the fiddler when they return.

Humperdinck's opera differs from Hänsel und Gretel (Hansel and Gretel) above all in its sad ending. The play that was the basis of the libretto involves more complex symbolism of alienation and is, therefore, rather more than a fairy-story. Orchestral excerpts must include the preludes to the three acts, the first suggesting the wandering of the prince, the second the dances of the townspeople as they await their king and the third the fiddler's watch for the prince and princess in the forest.