When mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke takes to the stage this weekend for the Houston Grand Opera production of Hansel and Gretel, this will be the fourth Hansel she’ll be singing – a role that she loves for the freedom it gives her.
She’s played a lot of women in her operatic career. What Hansel offers her – in what’s called a pants role – is the chance to fall over and rocket about the stage.
“In playing lots of women, so often you have to have a certain elegance, body posture, comportment. Whereas as a boy and particularly as a young boy, you can go the opposite direction. You can fall over. You can be a little bit awkward in your skin. You can actually feel really grounded.
“I forget the heels and I get to wear boots,” she says laughing. “And to really be silly.” She adds that she loves the “accessibility” of this opera.
The Brothers Grimm story is one that most people, including children, know, she explains. Hansel and Gretel live on the edge of the woods. At their mother’s direction, they go off into the forest to search for strawberries. They meet a witch who entices them to come to her house and there she tries to shove them into her oven to turn them into gingerbread cookies. Which she then will eat.
It’s not until the father comes home that the parents go looking for their children.
“We identify with the children. I know I do. There is something so pure and disarming about the innocence of youth,” Cooke says.
“What I love about it is it’s not too sugar-coated but it’s not scary. The gingerbread house has this cherry with a knife in it. That is the scariest it is. “
The witch is played by mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton . Cooke says. “The witch is just so funny, and you end up loving her. She does put them in a trance but there’s always with a wink. There’s always a bit of humor in it. Also we have Jamie Baron who is naturally so funny. Also, she has a lot of beauty.”
“She can have that alluring presence and then change to Jekyll and Hyde,” Cooke says. “Everyone is going to love the witch.”
Other cast members in this production with include soprano Mané Galoyan as Gretel Reginald Smith, Jr. as Father and sought-after soprano Alexandra Loutsion in her HGO debut as Mother. Antony McDonald directs, with Andreas Ottensamer conducting, both making company debuts.
Produced in association with the London’s Royal Ballet and Opera and San Francisco Opera, the opera runs about two hours.
The heroes of the story are the brother and sister, Cooke says. They free themselves and they are the ones who by themselves throw the witch into the oven and free all the gingerbread children who turn back into their human form.
As for the opera itself, “the music is really lush, really beautiful,” she says. “It’s a little Wagnerian.” In the last year she says she’s tried on some Wagnerian roles and feels in some ways that playing Hansel has prepared her for this.”
“Not only the Germanic language, but the vocal writing and the thickness of the orchestra,” she says, adding that it’s a shame that composer Engelbert Humperdinck hadn’t written more operas.
Her favorite song is the duet she sings with her sister, the famous “Abendsegen” or “Evening Prayer” in Act II as they are lost in the forest. It is sung again when the gingerbread children come out at the end of Act IV. “It always breaks my heart because usually I’m missing my kids. I see all these kids out there and I just get very sad. And then they sing so beautifully and in that whole moment of hocus pocus we bring them back to life — is very sweet.”
Performances are scheduled for January 30 through February 15 at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sundays at Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. Sung in German with English surtitles. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $25-$210.
Additional family performances in a shortened form. These 90-minute, English-language shows will feature mezzo-soprano Erin Wagner as Hansel, soprano Alissa Goretsky as Gretel, and tenor Demetrious Sampson, Jr. as the Witch.
- Student Matinee: Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, at 10 a.m. $15. Tickets and info at HGO.org/Community.
- Family Day: Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, at 11 a.m. Performance offers a relaxed environment inside the theater as well as activities for children in the Wortham Theater’s Grand Foyer. $25-$157.50. Tickets and info at HGO.org/FamilyDay.