This production exploits a dizzying combination of brilliant sets and CGI to realise in film the 'Alice in Wonderland' aspects of the Magic Flute - that kind of weird dream that you can't wake up from. Mozart's original production was conceived as a musical pantomime for the masses with unfeasible exaggerations, a sketchy but convoluted plot with caricatured characters coupled with Mozart's brilliant music. It was intended to 'send up' the more formalised italian libretto operas of high culture prevalent at the time and pack in audiences comprised of ordinary folk instead of the aristocracy and intelligentsia by offering a mixture of melodrama, comedy and great tunes. Stephen Fry's masterly conversion of the original German vernacular libretto into equally vernacular English makes it equally accessible to wide international audiences at cinema/DVD prices. Branagh and the cast did the most they could to round out the characters and they were able to use the technique of film to convey a greater range of emotions and thoughts than can usually be achieved by the long range over-acting needed for opera played on stage. The orchestra and cast is first rate and - as for a stage production - you just have to go along with the director's interpretation of the original fantastical storyline with all its nonsensical aspects and just be as amazed and amused as the original audiences mus have been. In the end the glorious music carries all before it.

Kenneth Branagh, seriously, what is going on in this one?!