German repertory of the Metropolitan Opera-house in the season of 1895-1896 it became as much of a permanency as any opera in the list. Humperdinck has built up the musical structure of "Hänsel und Gretel" in the Wagnerian manner, but has done it with so much fluency and deftness that a musical layman might listen to it from beginning to end without suspecting the fact, save from the occasional employment of what may be called Wagnerian idioms. The little work is replete with melodies which, though original, bear a strong family resemblance to two little songs which the children sing at the beginning of the first and second acts, and which are veritable nursery songs in Germany. These ditties and the principal melodies consorted with them contribute characteristic motifs out of which the orchestral part is constructed; and these motifs are developed in accordance with an interrelated scheme every bit as logical and consistent as the scheme at the bottom of "Tristan und Isolde." As in that stupendous musical tragedy, the orchestra takes the part played by the chorus in Greek tragedy, so in "Hänsel und Gretel" it unfolds the thoughts, motives, and purposes of the personages of the play and lays bare the simple mysteries of the plot and counterplot. The careless happiness of the children, the apprehension of the parents, promise and fulfilment, enchantment and disenchantment--all these things are expounded by the orchestra in a fine flood of music, highly ingenious in contrapuntal texture, rich in instrumental color, full of rhythmical life, on the surface of which the idyllic play floats buoyantly, like a water-lily which starts and slides Upon the level in little puffs of wind, Tho' anchored to the bottom.