Winter in Minnesota Late 1940s
Hansel and Gretel: The Operetta
(I hear the song, “A Children’s Prayer”, from Hansel and Gretel and I am taken back to a small Minnesota town in the late 1940s.)
Snow…there was snow…deep and drifted back by the fence, on the roads, all around the school. The streetlights made small haloes of light filled with the snow slanting down, quiet as the night. Beneath the snow the streets were icy, perfect for sledding…the run, boot flopping on the ice, the perfect transition onto the sled, belly first, and the glide, in another dimension altogether…everything perfect.
Soon it would be Christmas vacation, time for excitement, snow forts, movies, looking at the toys in the store windows, skating…totally wonderful. Bundling up to go out, coming into the warm house, the smell of baking and the mittens and scarves drying on the radiator…down time by the radio or on the kitchen floor, coloring or cutting up catalogs and magazines.
But the best was the annual elementary (then called grade school) Christmas operetta…every night, walking with my sister to school, almost a mile…always snowing, always exciting. We’d turn the corner and there was the school, lighted and bustling inside. We’d go to the auditorium…I to my small role as mouse in The Nutcracker, or the gingerbread boy in Hansel and Gretel.
My sister always had the lead, tall and beautiful, singing wonderfully. I knew all the music and the dance steps from Hansel and Gretel and was recruited at home to help her rehearse, (“Right foot first, left foot then, turn around and back again”). Always excited and slightly embarrassed, but mostly glad to only have a part in the chorus. I did get to be in the glow of her celebrity to some extent and in my own only to the extent of smile, blond hair and dimples.
But those rehearsal nights were magical.
…And walking home after. Nine or ten o’clock, everyone spilling out of the school together, talking and flushed with excitement. And as the others drifted away, each in their own direction, we were left alone with the snow and the stars…warm in the cold night.
And then dress rehearsal…the excitement of costumes and lights. Suddenly everything took on another level of energy. So many more people, so many things to be done and me lost, starry-eyed in the midst of it all. It could have been no more exciting if we had been preparing for the Broadway stage. I watched the kids I went to school with transformed into flowers, mice, trees, and characters from books.
And then opening night…the music, the audience, the total magic…only a blur of excitement, I don’t remember a word of it… and then it was over…only to stay with me forever. It still is there suspended in time…still with its hold on my heart.
(This is piece I wrote on December 25th of 2002)