Lakes Area Music Festival has an opera emphasis this year

If you wander in the woods around Minnesota’s lake-lined city of Brainerd, you probably won’t find a gingerbread house that holds a hungry witch, but it could happen.

At least that’s the premise of the Lakes Area Music Festival’s production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera, “Hansel and Gretel,” this summer’s centerpiece of a festival that’s growing increasingly operatic by the year.

“Opera has always been an integral part of the festival,” said German conductor Christian Reif, music director of the festival since 2021. “Now we have the amazing luxury of a full theater at the Gichi-ziibi Center for the Arts. We have the opportunity to be in the pit and to fully stage an opera.”

The 16-year-old festival opens this weekend, and, in addition to its production of “Hansel and Gretel” (Aug. 9-10), there will be a night of orchestra-accompanied arias and duets from singers in the festival’s resident artist program (Aug. 1) and festival-closing concerts of orchestral excerpts from Richard Wagner’s expansive “Ring Cycle,” presented alongside music from Howard Shore’s scores for the “Lord of the Rings” films (Aug. 16-17).

The final concerts might bring together the largest orchestra in the festival’s history. Brainerd has become a summertime destination for members of several American orchestras, particularly those from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra, but also New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony.

“It’s an embarrassment of riches, the musicians we’ve had,” Reif said. “For last year’s finale, Richard Strauss’ ‘Ein Heldenleben,’ I think five of the nine horns were the principal horns of their orchestras. It’s the same this year. These are really incredible artists. … There are so many who come back year after year. It’s always a great group of friends, and feels like family.”

One group that’s new each year is the cohort of resident operatic artists who use the festival as a bridge between their collegiate and professional careers.

Those four singers will all participate in “Hansel and Gretel,” which Reif described as on his bucket list of works he wants to conduct.

“People joke that it’s the best Wagner opera, because of all of its amazing tunes,” Reif said. “Humperdinck was very Wagnerian in his orchestra writing. But he managed to make it so simple at the same time. All of these songs and duets that seemed like they were always there. In nature, in the collective musical mind.”

Reif’s connection to opera extends to his home life, in that he’s married to increasingly renowned soprano Julia Bullock. The two won a Grammy last year for their album, “Walking in the Dark,” for which Reif accompanied her on piano.

Yet the final operatic offering doesn’t involve singers at all. “The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure” is a 70-minute condensation of many of the key orchestral elements in Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung,” a four-opera saga that takes about 15 hours to complete. Pairing it with Shore’s “Lord of the Rings” music invites the question of whether author J.R.R. Tolkien was partially inspired by Wagner when creating his fantasy novels, an allegation at which the author reportedly bristled.

“I would say the roots of them all are sagas, whether they are Germanic or Teutonic or other legends,” Reif said. “So they go back centuries, and authors weave these legends together.

So come for “The Lord of the Rings,” stay for the Wagner?

“Exactly, but, minutes-wise, the Wagner tops it by quite a bit.”

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

When: Friday through Aug. 17.

Where: Gichi-ziibi Center for the Arts, 602 S. 5th St., Brainerd, Minn.