Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) was born on September 1, 1854 at Siegburg, in the Rhine provinces of Germany. His father was a teacher and his mother a singer. He began his musical education with piano lessons at the age of seven and experienced his first opera in 1868 when he heard Lortzing's Undine, which became a musical model that he referred to throughout his career. After hearing Undine, Humperdinck immediately began working on two Singspiels, or operas with spoken dialogue, entitled Perla and Claudine von Villa Bella. In 1872 while studying architecture at the University of Cologne, he became friendly with the composer Ferdinand Hiller, who recognized his musical talent and persuaded him to become a student of composition, piano, and cello.

As a music student, Humperdinck was very successful, winning the Mozart Prize of Frankfurt in 1872, the Mendelssohn Prize of Berlin in 1879, and the Meyerbeer Prize of Berlin in 1881. His first works were published around this same time - the Humoreske for orchestra and the choral ballade, Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar both were published in 1879. In 1880 Humperdinck traveled to Naples where he met Richard Wagner, who invited him to Bayreuth to help prepare the score of Parsifal for its premiere and publication. Wagner would remain a dominant influence over Humperdinck's work for the remainder of his career.

After Bayreuth and short spells in Barcelona and Cologne, he joined the music publisher Schott in Mainz, Germany in 1888. He later took three posts in Frankfurt: professor at Hoch's conservatory, teacher of repertoire at Stockhausen's music school, and critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 1890 Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, asked her brother to set some folksongs for the Grimm Brothers' tale Hansel and Gretel for her children to perform. The beginnings of the opera amounted to just four songs with texts from the beloved tale. Those songs prompted Humperdinck to fashion a longer piece, including spoken dialogue. It was presented for relatives and friends at the Wettes' home, and was greeted so enthusiastically that Humperdinck determined to expand the work still further into a full-blown opera with Wette herself providing the libretto.

The complete opera was first presented in Weimar in December of 1893; it was quickly taken up in opera houses all over Europe, representing the perfect antidote to the chill, veristic winds blowing out of Italy at the time. Ostensibly a work for children, the opera has always found favor with audiences of all ages thanks to its odd blend of fable-like innocence and Wagnerian weight. Humperdinck's successful blending of a children's story with his own, rather monumental, orchestral world has made Hansel and Gretel the only post-Wagnerian work to be considered a successful synthesis of the German master's style.

The immense success of Hansel and Gretel proved difficult for Humperdinck to follow. At first he continued to produce works of the fairytale genre, including Die seiben Geislein, Königskinder, and the Sleeping Beauty story Dornröschen, but he never matched the success of Hansel and Gretel and turned to comic opera instead. Neither Die Heirat wider Willen, Die Marketenderin, nor Das Mirakel met with much success. While the adaptation of his own Königskinder from melodrama to opera met with critical acclaim, it never matched the popularity of Hansel and Gretel, which remains his musical legacy.

The operatic version of Königskinder premièred in New York in 1910; like Hansel and Gretel it started from simple song settings and went through an intermediate stage to a full opera, showing Wagnerian harmonic and textural influences. He enjoyed a fruitful collaboration in the theatre with Max Reinhardt, providing incidental music for a number of Shakespearean productions in Berlin.

During the course of his musical career, Humperdinck supplemented his compositional activities with turns as a music editor, critic, and, at various times, a music teacher; Wagner's son Siegfried was one of his pupils. His other works, particularly the 1880 Humoreske for orchestra in E major, find occasional performances today. Humperdinck continued to teach in Berlin until 1920. He died at the age of 67 in Neustrelitz, a town north of Berlin, on September 27, 1921.