On first glance, it looks good.
You might want to get rid of the  annotation:
@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
MySQL will default to Identity. Or, perhaps you should make it identity, rather than AUTO?
Maybe instead of opensession, you should try getSession?
Check out my signature links for a vareity of Hibernate examples, all of which were tested and documented using MySQL. It might be a good reference tutorial for you.
Here's the JavaDoc for the Hibernate Session for your perusal:
http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/api/org/hibernate/Session.html
This is the code I use for the free Hibernate3 tutorials and JPA examples on my website. This is tested against MySQL. See if you notice any major differences. It is also a User class:
http://www.hiberbook.com/HiberBookWeb/learn.jsp?tutorial=03addingrecordswithhibernate
Code:
package com.examscam.model;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import org.hibernate.Session;
import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
import org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration;
@Entity
public class User {
  private Long id;
  private String password;
  @Id
  @GeneratedValue
  public Long getId() {return id;}
  public void setId(Long id) {this.id = id;}
  public String getPassword() {return password;}
  public void setPassword(String password) {
    this.password = password;
  }
  public static void main(String args[]){
    AnnotationConfiguration config = 
                     new AnnotationConfiguration();
    config.addAnnotatedClass(User.class);
    config.configure();
    // new SchemaExport(config).create(true, true);
    SessionFactory factory = 
                  config.buildSessionFactory();
    Session session = factory.getCurrentSession();
    session.beginTransaction();
    System.out.println("creating user");
    
    User u = new User();
    u.setPassword("abc123");
    session.saveOrUpdate(u);
    System.out.println("user saved");
    session.getTransaction().commit();
    System.out.println("transaction successful!!!");  
  }
}
http://www.hiberbook.com/HiberBookWeb/learn.jsp?tutorial=03addingrecordswithhibernate
Please post back and let us know what changes fixed your code. It will help people in a similar situation. Also, if you have more problems, let us know! Don't fret too much getting started with Hiberante.