A few well-merited cast changes have revitalised WNO's 2005 production of Mozart's The Magic Flute.

In comes Neal Davies as a lovable Papageno, and Laure Meloy as a Queen of the Night whose vocal exertions sound like the sort of thing she triggers every day.

Comedy and high seriousness both express the opera's humanity, though it will always be a confection in which there is sometimes little to choose between the spooky cult of Isis and Osiris and the shrieking forces of darkness.

Dominic Cooke and designer Julian Crouch take cues from the surreal world of the artist Magritte and ask the audience to accept that a story of love and spiritual transformation can take place anywhere, even in the mind.

They leave the main characters untouched, almost out of veneration, but there is something awry in having Sarastro's brotherhood of reason and wisdom looking and acting like the products of eccentricity and folly.

Davies' Papageno is a delight from every angle, sung from the heart and acted with flair.

Rebecca Evans (Pamina), Peter Russell Thomas (Tamino) and David Soar (Sarastro) all sing forcefully.

Howard Kirk is a baleful Monostatos, and Camilla Roberts, Anne-Marie Gibbons and Joanne Thomas (Queen's attendants) sing glowingly and emote like sirens pumped with hormones.

The bowler hats and umbrellas are both references to Magritte and a cheeky way of depicting Masonic ritual.

Conductor Gareth Jones and the orchestra propel events comfortably and allow the sublime vocal moments time to flourish.