Spitfire Coloratura Die Zauberflöte from Covent Garden - reviewed by ROBERT ANDERSON '... this admirable DVD is a double first ...'

As age increases, so does my conviction that this work towers above the rest of Mozart's operas. Beethoven felt the wonder genius had wasted his time on such operas as Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, in which the women were such a contrast to his own wholly admirable Leonora. Figaro is matchless of its kind, with its own maybe happy ending but none of the resonance that stimulates the mind to wander as far as thought can reach during and after the Magic Flute. I am not competent to say how Masonic the strange pantomime eventually turned out. That music, heard mainly against an Egyptian background, solves so many of the characters' difficulties is enough for me.

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