All children familiar with fairy tales are aware that Hansel and Gretel's father was a good-for-nothing. All fortunate enough to have been taken to Engelbert Humperdinck's opera know that he makes his entrance dancing a jig, brandishing a bottle. Because of him, Hansel and Gretel are raggedy, hard-working children who must search the woods for strawberries, thus falling into the clutches of a horrid old witch who comes near to eating them.
Last week in Philadelphia the Woman's Christian Temperance Union demanded that the Civic Opera Company remove from its Hansel production...