For her latest operatic role, Alexandra Jerinic is drawing on her inner child.

Make that her inner 10-year-old boy.

She plays the role of Hansel in the California Opera production of “Hansel and Gretel,” which offers a public performance 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 27, at Fresno Veterans Memorial Auditorium, along with four school performances on Monday and Tuesday. free to the public, but reservations are required through the opera website. There will be a sugar-free “trick or treat” event starting at 1 pm in the lobby, and family-friendly costumes are encouraged.

Jerinic, a mezzo soprano, is a familiar name among California Opera audiences. While this is her first time playing Hansel in Fresno, she is a veteran of the role for Golden Gate Opera, where she’s played him three times. Gretel is played by Hanna Staley.

The production, with music by the 19th century German composer Englebert Humperdinck, uses the classic fairy tale as its source. I caught up with Jerinic to learn more about her trip to the forest to the Witch’s cottage.

Q: How old are Hansel and Gretel supposed to be?

A: I think of Hansel as being about 10, and Gretel is maybe about 12. Some people might have slightly different interpretations, where Hansel is the older brother. But our concept is that Gretel is a bossy older sister.

Q: The witch in “Hansel and Gretel” is a bit of a mystery: She evidently has a wholesaler’s relationship to candy products, but she’s pretty screwed up when it comes to her sources of protein. Why is she so interested in eating 10-year-old boys? While we’re at it, what’s up with the baking-children-into-gingerbread routine?

A: For some reason, she wants Hansel to get fat and then eat him, but she’s basically ready to shove Gretel in the oven at the earliest opportunity. As soon as she kind of ensnares them, she puts Handel while Gretel is doing errands and basically being her servant. We basically have to trick her into putting her head into the oven so that she can shove her in.

Q: So just to recap: The forest’s biggest serial killer bakes kids into gingerbread, but that doesn’t stop a clueless mom from sending her young children into that very same forest to get them out of the house. Is it just me, or does that seem really, really dark?

A: I love learning about all the mythology and thinking about the psychology of these things. The original fairy tale originated during famine. The children get deliberately left in the woods by the stepmother. It was usual to just kind of abandon your kids in the woods during famine. I think the logic is that if the children fend for themselves, they might actually have a better chance than if we buy to stay together and feed all of us.

My personal interpretation is that she’s a young stepmom. She hasn’t been married for long. She got married to this man because she probably needed a husband, and he needed someone to be a mother to his kids after his first wife died, and they’re starving. There’s not a lot of food. They’re poor. She’s not malevolent. She’s just exhausted and poor and stressed and is not handling it super well because she’s in a difficult situation.

And there’s kind of this parallel between the stepmother and then and the witch. And I could sit there for a long time and think about what’s going on underneath that, and how related those two characters are. It’s definitely food for thought.

Q: Food for thought? I see what you did there.

A: The opera normally runs two hours with an intermission. This version is shortened to about an hour. Sunday’s performance is public. The next day we have the school matinees, and, you know, we have to work within the restrictions of what schools are able to do. I think we still really have the meat of the story.

Q: Meat of the story? I see what you did there.

A:You know that wasn’t even intentional. I just say brilliant things automatically.

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Q: Do you think this opera is scary for kids?

A: I think the right amount. There’s a lot of humor in it, including a lot of humor in the witch. It also has some scariness to it. the wish, just a lot of just, like, weird things. So I think it’s, it’s tempered in between, like, it has some scariness to it. And I think, you know, it should otherwise, it’s like, why you don’t buy that these children are actually in world peril. But it is. There’s a lot of just funny silliness and joy in it too, and just gorgeous, gorgeous music.