¹ See, for example, Annegret Fauser and Mark Everist, eds., Music, Theater, and Cultural Transfer: Paris, 1830–1914 (Chicago, 2009); Barbara L. Kelly, ed., French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939 (Rochester, NY, 2008); and SHuebner, teven, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar. One of many examples of the latter trend is this journal's special issue, ‘Nineteenth-Century Grand Opéra on the Move’, 29/1 (2017).

² This article therefore provides a case study for ongoing musicological interests in looking beyond the dominant scholarly characterisations of nineteenth-century nationalism. See, for example, the colloquy ‘Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Nationalism’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 66/2 (2013), 523–50, especially Ryan Minor's contribution.

³ This significance has been expertly elucidated in the context of late eighteenth-century opera, through the ongoing work of Adeline Mueller, and in early twentieth-century opera, especially in relation to Ravel. See, for example, Mueller, Adeline, ‘Who Were the Drei Knaben?’, The Opera Quarterly 25/1–2 (2012), 88–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kilpatrick, Emily, The Operas of Maurice Ravel (Cambridge, 2018)Google Scholar. For studies of childhood and non-operatic nineteenth-century genres, see Hirsch, Marjorie W., Romantic Lieder and the Search for Lost Paradise (Cambridge, 2008)Google Scholar, and the work of Roe-Min Kok cited in notes 78 and 106.

⁴ The opera had received performances in Munich, Vienna, Berlin and London, some of which Parisian critics (Milliet and Lalo, for example) attended. The French language premiere took place in Antwerp in 1897; in France, the opera had been performed in Bordeaux, Rouen and Nantes.

⁵ For example, Pierre de Bréville, ‘Musique’, Mercure de France (July 1900), 262–5, at 265. Delighted critics who declared the Parisian response just as positive as German ones included Gaston Carraud, ‘Les premières’, La liberté (1 June 1900), 3, and Paul Milliet, ‘Hänsel et Gretel’, Le monde artiste (3 June 1900), 339–40.

⁶ For example, Henry Gauthier-Villars, ‘Les premières’, L’écho de Paris (1 June 1900), 3; Louis de Fourcaud, ‘Musique’, Le Gaulois (31 May 1900), 3; Léon Kerst, ‘Premières représentations’, Le petit journal (31 May 1900), 2. The run should be considered in the context of the competition provided by both the World Fair and a bumper season of Opéra-Comique premieres, which included one of the hits of the century, Charpentier's Louise.

⁷ Despite this, French critics praised the translation from a musical point of view. For example, Étienne Destranges, Hänsel et Gretel: étude analytique et thématique (Paris, 1899), 11. As Bruneau observed, the minor textual variations were less significant than the childlike poetic character that Mendès maintained. Alfred Bruneau, ‘Les théâtres’, Le Figaro (31 May 1900), 6. Humperdinck's early career had been distinctly international; for one of his French connections, see Sylvie Douche and Jean-Christophe Branger, eds., Massenet et ses pairs: de Castillon à Humperdinck – correspondances inédites (Paris, 2003).

⁸ For example, Albert Dayrolles, ‘Musique’, Les annales politiques et littéraires (10 June 1900), 361–2, at 361. This change continued the revisionist approach taken by the Grimms to their source material. See Elizabeth Wanning Harries, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, in The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, ed. Jack Zipes (Oxford, 2015), online. I refer in this article to the Grimms’ final edition of 1857.

⁹ Reviews that noted this imbalance while responding enthusiastically to the work included: Dayrolles, ‘Musique’; Adolphe Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale de l'Opéra-Comique: Hansel et Gretel’, Le théâtre 37 (July 1900), 10–15, at 13; P. Lacome, ‘Chronique musicale’, La libre parole (31 May 1900), 2–3, at 3; Maxime-Auguste Vitu, ‘Chronique musicale’, La justice (3 June 1900), 1. The minority for whom the opera failed because of this imbalance included: de Bréville, ‘Musique’; Alexandre Biguet, ‘Premières représentations’, Le radical (1 June 1900), 2. Hanslick was critical on this issue, which was also raised in (generally very positive) French reviews of the Antwerp and Bordeaux performances.

¹⁰ Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley, 1989), 343. Bruneau, in particular, adored the stylistic mixture. For Lacome and Vitu, the interpolation of the simple song numbers rescued the mismatch between tale and setting. Gauthier-Villars claimed that the combination of high counterpoint with operetta elements would satisfy both the dilettantes and the crowds. Other approvals of this mixture included Milliet, ‘Hänsel et Gretel’; Edouard Sarradin, ‘Courrier des théâtres’, Journal des débats politiques et littéraires (31 June 1900), 3; Gustave Bret, ‘La semaine musicale’, La presse (3 June 1900), 2; Gaston de Boisjoslin, ‘Chronique musicale’, L'univers (1 June 1900), 3. One reviewer who heard the mixture as incongruous noted how few others shared this view: P.D., ‘Chronique musicale’, La chronique des arts et de la curiosité (16 June 1900), 228–9, at 228. For other exceptions, see note 13.

¹¹ ‘un nouvel aliment pour le succès musical’. Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale’, 14. Jullien was a friend of the composer. A similar point had been made in Destranges, Hänsel et Gretel, 12.

¹² Arthur Pougin, ‘Semaine théâtrale’, Le Ménestrel (3 June 1900), 170–1, at 171. The only frequent point of comparison was the popular verismo of the 1890s, notably Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana, whose brevity (critics claimed) had provided a comparable respite from prevailing Wagnerian models. In a piece on the state of the genre the following year, Raymond Bouyer declared Mascagni and Humperdinck the two principal representatives of post-Wagnerian music. ‘Revue musicale’, La nouvelle revue (July 1901), 312–15.

¹³ Rudolf Louis, Die deutsche Musik der Gegenwart (Munich, 1909), 85f. As cited in Christopher Hailey, Franz Schreker (1878–1934): A Cultural Biography (Cambridge, 1993), 36. See also Fischer, Jens Malte, ‘Zwischen Wagnerismus und Verismo. Irr- und Auswege des deutschen Opernlibrettos um 1900’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 69 (2012), 142–53Google Scholar.

¹⁴ ‘allure’. Destranges, Hänsel et Gretel, 12. Among other things, Humperdinck lived at Bayreuth for over 18 months, helping with the preparation of Parsifal. For an excellent account of French composers’ and critics’ long, fraught reckoning with Wagner at the fin de siècle, see Huebner, French Opera.

¹⁵ ‘accablant’. Pierre Lalo, ‘La musique’, Le temps (5 June 1900), 3. An example he might have had in mind is the chromatic recitative in which Hänsel's first words cut across the naïvety of Gretel's opening song. de Bréville shared Lalo's view: ‘Musique’, 264.

¹⁶ Those who enjoyed this combination in particular included Dom Blasius (real name: Auguste Foureau), ‘Premières représentations’, L'intransigeant (1 June 1900), 2; Jacques Bainville, ‘Humperdinck’, La presse (31 May 1900), 2.

¹⁷ There was no equivalent in the Paris reception, for example, of the caricature of Humperdinck as the Witch, luring young audiences into Wagnerism (see Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 345). In the Parisian press, the opera was: an antidote to Wagnerism (Bainville, for example); emptily, derivatively Wagnerian (Biguet); a betrayal of Wagnerian principles despite its impressive stylistic homage (Paul Dukas, ‘Chronique musicale’, La revue hebdomadaire 4/2 (July 1900), 127–38); an infantilisation of Wagner (Stanislas Rzewuski, ‘Le monde des idées à l'étranger: le drame musical allemand’, Le gaulois (12 June 1895), 2); and even a cheeky domestication of Wagner (Charles Sarrus de Nismes, ‘Chronique des spectacles’, La petite presse (6 June 1900), 1). Pougin illustrated the convenient elasticity of the notion of Wagnerism in French musical discourse by insisting that there was nothing essentially Wagnerian about the opera (because of the qualities noted above and the lack of orchestral doubling of vocal lines). Pougin, ‘Semaine théâtrale’, 171. For most, the piece was a successful post-Wagnerian experiment through a refreshing take on Wagnerism.

¹⁸ Corneau took the trouble to explain that some form of Wagnerian influence was simply inevitable, especially when one considered how few French composers had escaped it. André Corneau, ‘Musique’, La revue blanche (May–August 1900), 307–10, at 309. On the co-opting of Wagner across the political spectrum by 1900, see Jane F. Fulcher, ‘Wagner in the Cultural Politics of the French Right and Left before World War I’, in Von Wagner zum Wagnérisme: Musik, Literatur, Kunst, Politik, ed. Annegret Fauser and Manuela Schwartz (Leipzig, 1999), 137–54.

¹⁹ See Zipes, Jack, The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World, 2nd edn (New York, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Lewis C. Seifert, ‘France’, in Zipes, Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. These tales bore considerable similarities to stories compiled by folklorists, but were initially tainted with an aristocratic sensibility at odds with the cultural legacy of the Revolution.

²¹ Seifert, ‘France’.

²² ‘notre mère à tous’. Milliet, ‘Hänsel et Gretel’, 339.

²³ Clear articulations of this included Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale’, 13; Lalo, ‘La musique’, 2.

²⁴ This is despite the fact that the Grimms’ tales were widely available in translation (this one often appearing as ‘Jeannot and Margot’). Penny Brown, A Critical History of French Children's Literature, vol. 2 (New York, 2008), 150. Milliet, exceptionally, described the libretto generally as a simplification of the tale, referring to Wette's narrative rather than the Grimms’.

²⁵ ‘le conte, un peu lourd, un peu plat, des frères Grimm’; ‘les frères Grimm touchent davantage certains coins de la sensibilité germanique’. ‘Théâtres’, Le temps (1 June 1900), 3. The same sentiment appeared in Lalo, ‘La musique’, 3; and Montcornet, ‘Les premières représentations’, Le petit parisien (31 May 1900), 2.

²⁶ ‘n'a ni la variété ni la légèreté de notre Petit Poucet’. Sarradin, ‘Courrier des théâtres’, 3.

²⁷ ‘une sonorité moins excessive, conviendraient mieux à des oreilles françaises’. Gaston Salvayre, ‘Premières représentations’, Gil Blas (31 May 1900), 3. De Bréville made the comparison in a more chauvinist fashion: ‘Musique’, 265.

²⁸ ‘gentillesses menues’. Dayrolles, ‘Musique’, 362. See also Bret, ‘La semaine musicale’, 2.

²⁹ ‘évoque le souvenir de nombreux récits de tel ou tel pays, récits parmi lesquels nous nous plairons, nous autres, à reconnaître notre Petit Poucet’. Bruneau, ‘Les théâtres’, 6. A comparable emphasis on the national tales’ similarities appeared in Pierre Kunc, ‘Revue musicale: Opéra-Comique’, La nouvelle revue (May 1900), 624–30; Kerst, ‘Premières représentations’; Gauthier-Villars, ‘Les premières’, Destranges, Hänsel et Gretel.

³⁰ Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale’, 13. Milliet, ‘Hänsel et Gretel’, 339.

³¹ ‘attendrissant’; ‘tant de contes de tant de pays’. Catulle Mendès, ‘Premières représentations’, Le journal (31 May 1900), 4.

³² Matthew Gelbart, in particular, has discussed how the ideologies of folk song disseminated by intellectuals across nineteenth-century Europe were characterised by a complex inter-relation between conceptions of the local or national and the universal. In the context of fairy tales, Parisian music critics presented a simplified version of that tension, which remained closely tied (for them, if not for folklorists) to national identity. Gelbart, Matthew, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner (Cambridge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ Rzewuski, ‘Le monde des idées’, 2. The article was part of a column seeking to correct French ignorance about German theatrical culture.

³⁴ ‘universelle humanité’; ‘le génie collectif’. Rzewuski, ‘Le monde des idées’, 2.

³⁵ This is not to say, of course, that others had no such agenda (see note 50). An interest in Franco-German commonalities appeared in papers across the political spectrum, as in Lacome's review in the extremely right-wing La libre parole, or Kunc's in La nouvelle revue, directed by an anti-Wagnerian, Republican revanchard. Kunc, ‘Revue musicale’. As Ross notes, most arts columns were not governed by the editorial line. Ross, James, ‘D'Indy's “Fervaal”: Reconstructing French Identity at the “Fin de Siècle”’, Music & Letters 84/2 (2003), 209–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 237.

³⁶ ‘Théâtres’, Le temps; see also Bruneau, ‘Les théâtres’, Lalo, ‘La musique’, Salvayre, ‘Premières représentations’. Critics were generally aware that some ‘folk’ themes were invented, but were untroubled by concerns of authenticity.

³⁷ For a study of Humperdinck's sources for his folk song settings, see Hans-Josef Irmen, Hänsel und Gretel: Studien und Dokumente zu Engelbert Humperdincks Märchenoper (Mainz, 1989), 89–104.

³⁸ For example, Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin, La chanson populaire (Paris, 1886), cited in Jann Pasler, Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France (Berkeley, 2009), 353, and Annegret Fauser, Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World's Fair (Rochester, 2005), 254.

³⁹ In France, folk material attained a contentious significance through its ability to articulate distinct regional identities. This was especially inimical to Republicans’ pursuit of a strongly united France, although Republicans also considered regional folk material as a means of cultivating national cohesion. See Seifert, ‘France’.

⁴⁰ Comments on national difference were simply that, unlike for French audiences, the tunes would take on a personal emotional significance for German listeners. For example, de Bréville, ‘Musique’, 264.

⁴¹ French audiences discovered this, for example, in performances by Spanish and Hungarian musicians at the 1889 World Fair. See Fauser, Musical Encounters, 217.

⁴² Corneau, ‘Musique’, 309.

⁴³ Destranges, Hänsel et Gretel, 18. Destranges, whose real name was Étienne Rouillé, was born in and associated with Nantes, which maintains strong ties to Brittany.

⁴⁴ See Huebner, French Opera, 359, discussing Chausson's Le roi Arthus.

⁴⁵ ‘la parenté des motifs populaires des différents pays’. Destranges, Hänsel et Gretel, 18.

⁴⁶ See in particular Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’, ch. 7.

⁴⁷ Fulcher, ‘Wagner in the Cultural Politics of French Right and Left’, 137.

⁴⁸ On the registering of this in other aspects of musical culture, see Pasler, Composing the Citizen, 319–22.

⁴⁹ Arguably, critics had asserted for years that Franco-German national difference manifested variations on a common ground in their reiteration of Wagner's dictum of 1879 that ‘If the Frenchman likes the dream that acts, the German likes action that dreams’ (‘Si le Franҫais aime le rêve qui agit, l'Allemand aime l'action qui rêve’) – as Bruneau phrased it in his review. In context, however, Wagner's original remark stressed fundamental ‘racial’ distinctness, which most discussions of fairy tales did not. The comparison between Humperdinck's opera and Perrault's tale happened to illustrate the statement remarkably well. Bruneau, ‘Les théâtres’, 6. For context, see Huebner, French Opera, 322.

⁵⁰ Fulcher, ‘Wagner in the Cultural Politics of French Right and Left’, 150. On Bruneau's close relationship with Destranges, see Jean-Christophe Branger, Alfred Bruneau: un compositeur au cœur de la bataille naturaliste. Lettres à Etienne Destranges. Paris-Nantes 1891–1915 (Paris, 2003). Milliet and Jullien's loyalties as committed Wagnerians (a particularly seasoned one, in the latter's case) make sense of their emphasis on Franco-German commonalities.

⁵¹ Camille Le Senne, ‘Premières représentations’, Le siècle (31 May 1900), 3. Gauthier-Villars insisted that Hänsel and Gretel could come from any country and period. ‘Les premières’, 3.

⁵² A literal translation of the French in the example is: ‘The little feet go: tap! tap! tap! The little hands: clap! clap! clap! One foot there, one foot here, Then a turn, and there you are!’ The sounds and references to body parts are the same as in Wette's German. My source for examples is Engelbert Humperdinck, Adelheid Wette and Catulle Mendès, Hänsel et Gretel: Conte lyrique en 3 actes et 5 tableaux. Partition pour chant et piano réduite par R. Kleinmichel (Paris, 1897), 14.

⁵³ Gabriel Vicaire, ‘Nos idées sur le traditionnalisme’, Revue des traditions populaires 7 (25 July 1886), 189. Cited in Pasler, Composing the Citizen, 392.

⁵⁴ For example: Bainville, ‘Humperdinck’, 2; Lacome, ‘Chronique musicale’, 3.

⁵⁵ ‘avec l’âme simple des enfants’; ‘sentiment populaire’. Destranges, Hänsel et Gretel, 29.

⁵⁶ Ross Cole discusses the evidently problematic implications of these ideas, in the British context, in his ‘Vernacular Song and the Folkloric Imagination at the Fin de Siècle’, 19th-Century Music 42/2 (2018), 73–95.

⁵⁷ See, for example, Gérard de Nerval's ‘Sylvie’ (1853), in which the protagonist returns to the countryside of his childhood, driven by memories of a dream-like land of children's song where an idealised rural spirit is preserved.

⁵⁸ This is Rosemary Lloyd's summary in The Land of Lost Content: Children and Childhood in Nineteenth-Century French Literature (Oxford, 1992), 233–4.

⁵⁹ ‘riant, sautant, chantant et dansant comme des fous’. Pougin, ‘Semaine théâtrale’, 170. Many others also emphasised their exuberant performance.

⁶⁰ See note 13. Hailey extends this explanation to the opera's international success.

⁶¹ For example, Eberhard Thamm, ‘Stilkritische Bemerkungen zum Schaffen Engelbert Humperdincks’, in Studien zur Musik in Siegburg (Cologne, 1974), 29–36.

⁶² ‘explique que Haensel et Gretel ait plu au public de tous les pays où l'on trouve encore des enfants ou des gens qui l'ont été’. Dukas, ‘Chronique musicale’, 134.

⁶³ Bret, ‘La semaine musicale’, 2.

⁶⁴ ‘tous les publics’. Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale’, 13.

⁶⁵ ‘rythmes populaires’; ‘conte enfantin’. Milliet, ‘Hänsel et Gretel’, 339.

⁶⁶ Bainville, among others, made this point directly; ‘Humperdinck’, 2.

⁶⁷ ‘psychologie enfantine’. Kunc, ‘Revue musicale’, 628.

⁶⁸ ‘Les premières’, 3. Bret also used the phrase, referring in particular to the opening of Acts I and II. Clearly, Craponne and Rioton's singing and acting were central to creating this impression: most critics specifically praised their childlike performances.

⁶⁹ de Bréville, ‘Musique’, 265. See also Carraud, ‘Les premières’; Lalo, ‘La musique’; H.V., ‘Musique’, L'aurore (31 May 1900), 3.

⁷⁰ For example, Dayrolles, ‘Musique’, 361; Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale’, 13; Sarradin, ‘Courrier des théâtres’, 3. Newspaper announcements publicised the opera as a family spectacle, and matinée performances were introduced purportedly at many families’ request. The house gave children under ten a discount for certain seating areas (as for other fairy tale works such as Massenet's Cendrillon).

⁷¹ ‘le poème de l'enfance, de l'enfance aux beaux rires, aux beaux songes’. Bruneau, ‘Les théâtres’, 6.

⁷² ‘il semble qu'elles le rajeunissent; qu'elles le ramènent à ses premiers rêves’. Milliet, ‘Hänsel et Gretel’, 340.

⁷³ ‘des enfants qui, partout, sont venus en foule applaudir de leurs petites mains, les aventures d'Hänsel et de Gretel’. Destranges, Hänsel et Gretel, 29.

⁷⁴ This is Lloyd's summary in Land of Lost Content, 4, citing H. Durand, Le règne de l'enfant (Paris, 1889), 103.

⁷⁵ The precise significance of this chorus is beyond the scope of this article. Press photographs strongly suggest that it comprised women rather than children in the first Opéra-Comique performances.

⁷⁶ Irmen, Hänsel und Gretel, 63, 70.

⁷⁷ For example: Dayrolles, ‘Musique’, 361. Such responses illustrated the advantages of Wette's addition: the set-piece ballet transformed the work into something clearly made for the operatic stage.

⁷⁸ For instance, ‘L'ange protecteur’, in Henri Gautier, La lyre enfantine. Recueil de petits chants à l'usage de toutes les écoles (Paris, 1880), 123. Irmen also implies that this is a characteristic nineteenth-century image, by comparing the scene briefly with Rückert's ‘Des fremden Kindes heiliger Christ’ (1816) and Hans Christian Andersen's ‘The Little Match Girl’ (1835), in which vulnerable children receive communications from angels. Irmen, Hänsel und Gretel, 86–8. These comparisons emphasise an element of literary cults of childhood innocence – the child's return to heaven in death – which is less relevant to the opera. For an excellent discussion of precisely that image in the context of music and fairy tales, see Roe-Min Kok, ‘Who Was Mignon? What Was She?: Popular Catholicism and Schumann's Requiem, Op. 98b’, in Rethinking Schumann, ed. Roe-Min Kok and Laura Tunbridge (Oxford, 2011), 88–102.

⁷⁹ Linda A. Pollock, ‘Foreword’, in Picturing Children: Constructions of Childhood between Rousseau and Freud, ed. Marilyn R. Brown (Aldershot, 2002), xv–xix, at xvii.

⁸⁰ Several important laws were instituted only in the 1880s and 1890s. Weissbach, Lee S., ‘Child Labor Legislation in Nineteenth-Century France’, The Journal of Economic History 37/1 (1977), 268–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ In his 1925 study The Defense of the Child by French Novelists, C.S. Parker proposed that literary representations of children were the most important factor in the introduction of child protection laws in the early Third Republic. Lloyd, Land of Lost Content, 4.

⁸² See, for example, Schafer, Sylvia, Children in Moral Danger and the Problem of Government in Third Republic France (Princeton, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For this idea in children's literature, see Brown, Critical History, 80.

⁸³ Irmen's comparisons also imply this.

⁸⁴ Lucie Kayas, ‘Commentaire musical et littéraire’, in L'avant-scène opéra: Humperdinck: Hänsel et Gretel, ed. Alain Duault (Paris, 1987), 30–83, at 55.

⁸⁵ A literal translation of Mendès's French is: ‘What if they've become lost in the gloomy wood, in this night without moon or stars!’ ‘O Heaven!’ ‘There amidst the silence and the shadow, The Witch prowls at nightfall!’ Humperdinck et al., Hänsel et Gretel, 58.

⁸⁶ Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale’, 12. Several did so by quoting the text of the moment in their summary of the plot: Dukas, ‘Chronique musicale’, 130; Montcornet, ‘Premières représentations’, 2.

⁸⁷ Lloyd, Land of Lost Content, 241. For the social reality underlying this character type, see Rachel G. Fuchs, Abandoned Children: Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany, 1984).

⁸⁸ ‘une force supérieure, souvent surnaturelle’. Marina Bethlenfalvay, Les visages de l'enfant dans la littérature française du XIX^e siècle: esquisse d'une typologie (Geneva, 1979), 64. Bethlenfalvay's example is ‘La confiance du Marquis Fabrice’.

⁸⁹ Bruneau claimed to have been moved to tears, ‘Les théâtres’, 6. For other positive responses, see Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale’, 15; Gauthier-Villars, ‘Les premières’, 3; Dayrolles, ‘Musique’, 361. One critic pointed out that it was the expansiveness of Humperdinck's music that justified and facilitated the spectacular mise en scène: P.D., ‘Chronique musicale’, 229.

⁹⁰ ‘la souveraineté des choses innocentes’. Bethlenfalvay, Les visages de l'enfant, 65.

⁹¹ ‘sérénité séraphique’. Jullien, ‘Théâtre nationale’, 15.

⁹² Lloyd, Land of Lost Content, 241–2.

⁹³ This is part of Anne Higgonet's argument in Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood (London, 1998).

⁹⁴ James R. Kincaid, Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture (New York, 1992), 71; James R. Kincaid, Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Durham, NC, 1998), 53. Kincaid uses his analysis of the Romantic child to pursue disturbing arguments about ‘child-loving’. My citations should not be taken as endorsing those arguments. These studies are generally focused on Victorian culture, but their arguments extend to similar cults of childhood elsewhere in Europe. Literary scholars have also reacted against such critiques of Romantic childhood, pointing out that these tropes were sometimes deployed self-consciously; for example, Marah Gubar, Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children's Literature (Oxford, 2009). But this does not hold true of Hänsel und Gretel, and certainly not of Parisian critics’ view that the opera presented a psychologically compelling portrait of childhood. For another musicological application of these ideas, see Metzer, David, ‘“We Boys”: Childhood in the Music of Charles Ives’, 19th-Century Music 21/1 (1997), 77–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹⁵ Jack Zipes, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry (New York, 1997), 56.

⁹⁶ Hélène Pierrakos interprets this differently, suggesting that Act II represents the children's maturation. ‘L'enfance de l'art’, in L'avant-scène opéra, ed. Duault, 82–5.

⁹⁷ Salvayre, ‘Premières représentations’, 3. This change in register seems to have been particularly emphasised in the Opéra-Comique performances by Marie Delna's highly comic performance as the Witch. Bruneau, ‘Les théâtres’, 6; Dukas, ‘Chronique musicale’, 135.

⁹⁸ Amanda Glauert, ‘Hänsel und Gretel’, Grove Music Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O902157. Destranges called the Pantomime the work's climax (‘point culminant’): Hänsel et Gretel, 22. Carré's mise en scène could only have heightened this impression.

⁹⁹ In his translation, Mendès replaced ‘Heaven’ (‘des Himmels’) with ‘God’ (‘Dieu’), retaining Wette's legal imagery. After the Witch's demise, Hänsel also refers to the angels as if they were responsible for the victory.

¹⁰⁰ For example, Tolkien, J.R.R., Tree and Leaf (London, 1975), 62–4Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ The angels are arguably mere figments of the children's dream, but French and German critics’ references to a ‘Jacob's Ladder’ suggest that the scene recalled a biblical visitation, in which the dreamed figure is no less real than the dreamer (though may belong to a different order of reality). Irmen, Hänsel und Gretel, 61. Le Senne, ‘Premières représentations’, 3.

¹⁰² Austin, Linda M., ‘Children of Childhood: Nostalgia and the Romantic Legacy’, Studies in Romanticism 42 (2003), 75–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 80.

¹⁰³ Brown, A Critical History, 149–52. Kunc voiced explicit approval of the opera's moralising ending: ‘Revue musicale’, 630.

¹⁰⁴ ‘Citizen … my mother is the Republic’, announces one of Hugo's mouthpieces in Les misérables, addressing a recently orphaned character.

¹⁰⁵ On the musical dimensions to this curriculum, and its variation over time, see Pasler, Composing the Citizen, 85–92.

¹⁰⁶ See, in particular, Glenn Watkins's discussion of Debussy's wartime music in Proof Through the Night: Music and the Great War (London, 2003), 103–8. For a subtle examination of childhood, nationalism and Schumann's politics, see Kok, Roe-Min, ‘Of Kindergarten, Cultural Nationalism, and Schumann's “Album for the Young”’, The World of Music 48/1 (2006), 111–32Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁷ ‘comme chante l'enfance elle-même’. Dukas, ‘Chronique musicale’, 134

¹⁰⁸ For example, Louis Pergaud, La guerre des boutons (Paris, 1912).

¹⁰⁹ Often, of course, that image implicitly reproduced hierarchies, especially those of class. The rabble of street-children – one of the image's popular literary incarnations – was clearly distinct from smaller, familial groups of domesticated bourgeois children, whose trappings Hänsel and Gretel bear (despite their milieu).

¹¹⁰ This is largely true, for example, of studies of the transnational afterlives of Goethe's Mignon: Steedman, Carolyn, Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority, 1780–1930 (Harvard, 1998)Google Scholar; Cave, Terence, Mignon's Afterlives: Crossing Cultures from Goethe to the Twenty-First Century (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.