In his informative program note for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s post-Thanksgiving concert version of Engelbert Humperdinck’s "fairy-tale opera," Hänsel und Gretel, Michael Steinberg opines: "whether or not it is actually an opera children love — as against one their handlers think they will love (or ought to love) — remains, for me, an open question. . . . I know I enjoy it immensely more now than I did as a child." Certainly the children around me, without the attention-grabbing devices of a fully staged production (flying witch, gingerbread house, 14 angels descending), were pretty restless until one of the memorable tunes brought forth smiles of familiarity.

But grown-ups couldn’t have been more enchanted by this lovely performance. In charge was the Polish-born Marek Janowski, now director of the Dresden and Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestras and the Radio Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, and a frequent BSO guest conductor between 1989 and 1996. He shaped Humperdinck’s Wagner-sized orchestra (and Wagnerian tunes) into graceful waves of momentum — the orchestra lovingly caressing those soaring melodies and tripping lightly through the familiar folk-like songs, like "Brüderchen, komm, tanz mit mir" ("Brother, come, dance with me") and "Suse, liebe Suse" ("Susie, dear Susie") — a real folk tune. There was little staging, so for once we could concentrate on the music, especially the darker side of it. And no sets meant no stopping for set changes, so it all whizzed by.

The opera, with its milder-than-Grimm libretto written by Humperdinck’s sister, Adelheid, and evidently put into shape by her husband, Hermann Wette, was sung, impeccably, in its original, characterful German, with expertly projected translations any literate child could read. This language decision was surely right. Flat, homely English provides the wrong flavor for this lush, Germanic, schlag- and schmalz-laden score.

Hänsel and Gretel were an adorable pair of BSO debutantes, soprano Ruth Ziesak and mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose. Since they both wore pants suits, they looked more like two sisters (or brothers) than brother and sister. Ziesak, the taller one with the shorter hair, was a deliciously silver-toned Gretel as tomboy, or "new woman" (no witch is gonna push her around); shorter, riper, pony-tailed Donose was a melting-voiced, sweetly timid Hänsel (he is, after all, the one who gets caged). But despite the absence of family resemblance, there was such touching, tender interplay between them, and both were so likable — how could they not have grown up together?

Their Mother and Father were the American soprano Nadine Secunde and the distinguished German baritone Berndt Weikl. Secunde squawked her annoyance at her mischievous children, then poured out a moving, desperate, motherly lament over the state of the family’s poverty. Weikl rather barked his entire role, yet he too, with his droopy mustache, dimpled grin, and pointed delivery, was the embodiment of the kindly dad, worried about his children in the dark woods overnight, with a child-eating Witch lurking.

That Witch was supposed to be the celebrated Greek dramatic mezzo Agnes Baltsa, whose only previous BSO appearance was a decade ago in the Verdi Requiem. But the Witch who emerged in the third act didn’t look or sound anything like Baltsa. That was no mezzo, that was, in fact, African-American tenor Steven Cole, who last played (brilliantly) a fast-talking, cartwheeling Sellem, the auctioneer in the BSO’s 1995 staged performance of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. The insert explaining the cast change never got inserted into many of the programs.

It apparently wasn’t easy to get a last-minute replacement in this country for a German-speaking Witch. But the BSO did well. Cole may not have been very scary, but he was wonderfully nutty — slipping into falsettos and other witchy voices, darting around, and flipping his black scarf over his shoulder. There’s a history of men playing witches (not only in Hänsel und Gretel but also in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas); Michael Steinberg rather dismisses this campy practice in Humperdinck’s opera, partly because the tenor register tends to get buried in the orchestration. But Cole’s zest was infectious — I hated to see him incinerated so soon.

Soprano Maria Konyova, who sings Mimi at the New York City Opera, was up in the first balcony for two appealing cameos, the Sandman and the Dew Fairy; the latter sings the words to the gorgeous melody that sweeps through the overture ("I come with the golden sunshine"). The members of the PAL’s Children’s Chorus were awfully well-behaved for kids just rescued from becoming a Witch’s dessert — but they sounded radiant and sang without scores.

The BSO, made up of an unusually large number of second-desk players, had some dicy moments but emerged triumphant under Janowski’s skillful guidance. My favorite performance was by percussionist J. William Hudgins as a thieving two-noted cuckoo — both comic and sinister as the woods darken around our hero and heroine.

IN HIS PROGRAM NOTE for Boston Academy of Music’s new production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, stage director Stephen Quint calls this "one of the world’s most indestructible stage works. The most miserly amateur production . . . can be completely delightful and satisfying." So though I disliked what Quint did with it, the audience seemed pleased. It was actually heartening to see such responsiveness to a work made up of witty language and engaging tunes (there were audible chuckles, and sighs, at the pirates’ "Come, friends, who plough the seas" — a tune better known as "Hail, hail, the gang’s all here"). People might have liked a truly imaginative production even better.

Although Gilbert & Sullivan operettas have been BAM’s bread and butter, the company’s previous G&S (except for last year’s inventive and naughtily satirical Mikado, which was staged by Ira Siff) has emphasized the kind of archly and mechanically self-conscious production that parodies only other G&S productions. Actors are so busy looking out at the audience, they rarely look at one another. The shticks are so disconnected from character, emotion, or situation, it’s hard to care what happens; everything depends only on the quality of the next joke. The number in this Pirates that got the biggest laugh was the Major-General’s poignant second-act ballad, "Sighing softly to the river," which Quint staged as a burlesque of classical ballet, with policemen and pirates as darting Wilis and the Major-General (Quint himself) as the Dying Swan.

Everything else seemed mere routine. I hope I never have to see another group of pirates forming a kick line, or a row of policemen bumping into one another like Keystone Kops when one stops and the rest don’t. Even the updatings seemed dated: the Major-General, desperately groping for a rhyme with "strategy," interpolated "I think I’d better use one of my lifelines."

Quint’s note alludes to his numerous productions of Pirates. Perhaps he’s directed one too many. In any case, it was disheartening to see this throwback to BAM’s bad old days. Former BAM artistic director (and company founder) Richard Conrad was criticized for casting himself in most of his productions; yet here was Quint directing himself in the leading comic role. The old BAM was a kind of stock company — part of the pleasure was seeing the same faces in new roles. Five of the major roles here were filled by singers making their company debuts, but there wasn’t one I crave to hear again. Of the old BAM stalwarts, Drew Poling’s bumbling Police Sergeant was a focused and touchingly comic characterization. Anna Maria Silvestri, the brilliant Mrs. Peachum in BAM’s Beggar’s Opera, was reduced to shameless — and relentless — mugging and milking as Ruth, the nursemaid turned pirate, who needs to elicit some sympathy or the laughs at her age and lack of allure will (and did) seem crudely misogynistic.

The most newsworthy element was conductor Gil Rose, music director of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, whose excellent work for BAM on Samuel Barber’s Vanessa two years ago is about to be preserved on a new Naxos recording. Rose provided a jaunty bounce for Sullivan’s livelier numbers, though the playing didn’t exactly sparkle, and the pace dragged in slower numbers like Frederic and Mabel’s long second-act separation duet, "Stay, Frederic, stay!" (the generally vague diction didn’t help here, or anywhere else). At least he kept most of the music moving along.

If BAM is essentially under new management, the first place for revitalization ought to be Gilbert & Sullivan — a process that seems to have ground to a halt after it was begun last year under the old management.

PIANIST/CONDUCTOR DANIEL BARENBOIM played a lot of notes for an almost sold-out Symphony Hall crowd in his first Boston keyboard recital in 30 years, for the FleetBoston Celebrity Series. He started with Mozart (the C-major Sonata, K.330) and Beethoven (the Appassionata), and ended with Liszt: the three Sonetti del Petrarca and the big Fantasia quasi Sonata (Liszt’s "other" sonata), Après une lecture du Dante ("After a reading of Dante").

Barenboim remains a controversial musician. At the end, maybe half the audience was standing and cheering while the rest of us applauded politely. Although he had a number of technical lapses, especially in the "infernal" Dante Sonata, he played with remarkable agility, a staggering flexibility of touch (much of it exquisite), speed, and volume. He had many unusual ideas about phrasing, too, especially in the first movement of the Mozart and the slow, variations movement of the Beethoven.

But none of this amounted to more than mechanics. In very few places did he seem to connect to the music, to make any emotional sense of all those notes, to provide a narrative shape or the impression of spontaneity. One Petrarch Sonnet sounded like another, though their moods are quite different. In the middle of Mozart’s Andante cantabile, the very quiet minor-key lament over a rumbling bass suddenly seemed about something real — something felt. A moment of poetry in the midst of all the prose.

The applause generated four encores, three brief, minty, palate-cleansing Scarlatti "greatest hits," full of trills played with such quicksilver delicacy they didn’t need to mean anything, and a hilariously unbuttoned Villa-Lobos O Polichinelo, with pompous bass chords punctuating the manic commedia dell’arte frivolity. Barenboim played this "Punch-y" encore with more dramatic flair than anything else on the program.