Musical youth

British Youth Opera celebrates its 21st birthday season with its annual two productions at the Peacock Theatre: this year one is reasonably successful and one a triumph. The moderate success is The Magic Flute, in Jeremy Sams’s sharp translation. Flute is a work which students and young singers go for whenever possible (this is the fourth production BYO has mounted), yet it is extremely taxing, in several ways. At least three of the roles are almost impossible for anyone to sing very well, and the reams of spoken dialogue, in whichever language the opera is being performed in, seem to present a challenge few singers can rise to. The differences of tone, incessant and insistent, between the most lofty seriousness and matey comedy, present a test for a producer which is rarely passed. All that, quite apart from the usual problem of performing Mozart, the most demanding of composers, in a way that does justice to the unique greatness of his spirit, never greater than in this masterpiece.