When Hansel and Gretel's parents abandon them in the forest and the children lose track trying to return home, the two brothers end up in the chocolate and candy house of an evil witch, who invites them to fatten Hansel and Gretel. Hansel for dinner. The short story that other brothers, the Grimm, collected and published in 1812, is this year the basis of the traditional Christmas carol that Cadena SER has been reciting to its listeners every year for 11 years – albeit in the version that can be heard on the 25th will be December at 12:00 p.m. (with a repeat on January 5th at 6:00 p.m. and also available at any time on the SER podcast), the two brothers will be different on their way through the only forest that still exists on earth Experience adventure Meet animal speakers.
Author Elvira Lindo was responsible for adapting Hansel and Gretel, a story that barely takes up three pages, and turning it into an hour-long sound fiction. She herself decided that this would be the main story of this year's SER Christmas story. “For radio, a very literary medium, it seemed to me, and taking into account my radio experience, more inspiring to take a classic story that has a very strong plot but in which there is no psychology of the characters,” he explains to Lindo by phone. The absence of details such as the place or time in which the story takes place or the personalities of the protagonists allowed the author to give free rein to her creativity. “Hansel and Gretel combines many features of the classic story: there is night, fear, abandonment, brutality… It was a challenge to tell that and also have humor. “It was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had,” he says.
Javier Cámara voices the father of Hansel and Gretel.
In addition to humor, Elvira Lindo, who remembers her early career in radio through this adaptation, also wanted to include a lot of music in her story, as in all traditional stories of this kind. For example, the singer and actress Sheila Blanco gives voice and music to the blackbird that the children meet, and the story also includes the voices of the children's choir from the Los Peñascales school. Javier Cámara and Emma Suárez are the voices of the children's father and stepmother, while María Pujalte plays the witch, Eulalia Ramón the fox and Elvira Lindo herself plays the black sheep. The children Marco Guerrero and Matilda Donate are Hansel and Gretel. Regular listeners of these Christmas stories will recognize their voices, having been Pinocchio and Mecha themselves two years ago. An adult Gretel, voiced by Ana Wagener, is the one who tells the story, putting a twist on the classic omniscient narrator of traditional stories.
With “Hansel and Gretel,” Elvira Lindo wanted to initiate a reflection on the future and childhood while at the same time drawing attention to the importance of taking care of the environment. The author, who was closely involved in the creation of the story, highlights the total freedom she had in a story that has no “political correctness” whatsoever and that does not avoid even the darkest aspects of Hansel and Gretel.
The singer and actress Sheila Blanco, at one point during the recording of “Hansel and Gretel”.
The fact that the protagonists are children and the musical contributions made the preparation of a story whose production begins in early October more complex, as its director Ana Alonso, a veteran in the role, explained. For the songs, journalist Iñaki de la Torre participated in the story to accompany the guitar. “It's a very dark story, like all children's stories, and with a lot of restraint. When an adult hears it, he reads it, and when a child hears it, he becomes entertained and reads it again,” Alonso reflects.
Elvira Lindo's version is set in an indeterminate future where the earth has dried up and only a forest remains. The children live in the dry part, but their adventure takes place in the green area. One of the challenges of this sound fiction is that the listener can grasp the differences between different environments through hearing. “When Hansel and Gretel's house sounds, in the dryness, sounds of the desert environment, cicadas, dry wind… We want you to be able to feel the difference between the desert part and the forest,” explains Roberto García, responsible for the sound staging of the narrative.
Ana Wagener is the narrator of the story and plays the adult version of Gretel.
This is where the magic comes into play, as defined by García, the naturalist Carlos de Hita and his soundscapes. De Hita has composed several forest environments in which the forest takes on a different character, darker, more aggressive, more luminous… “The soundtrack has a narrative sense in conditioning the action and tuning in to the dramatic tension of the plot .,” explains De Hita on the phone. He has been using the sound archive of his nature recordings for 37 years. “Nature always has the right sound to create a dramatic situation. “It's more than just atmosphere, it's part of the story and gives the story more depth,” he says of his feature. To create different environments, he explains, he plays with the voices of animals (a blackbird conveys joy, the owl and the owl are scarier…) and with densities: a forest environment full of insect sounds is more overwhelming than a forest environment full of insect sounds that the Noises are far from conveying relaxation.
De Hita drew on his recordings for his soundscapes, but Roberto García added new sounds to this story that he had not recorded. One of his concerns in the last days before completing his work is that the sound of the animals' movement is perfect. He put particular affection into the fox's movement: “Eight months ago I adopted a dog, and the fox's steps are my dog's steps.” Animals move differently than we do and the sound is different. Getting this to fit and look good was a nice challenge. I had never recorded an animal for the Christmas carol,” he concludes.
You can follow EL PAÍS Television on X or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Get the TV newsletter
All the latest news from broadcasters and platforms, with interviews, news and analyses, as well as recommendations and reviews from our journalists
LOG IN