Benjamin Britten’s operetta Paul Bunyan was a product of his collaboration with the poet W.H. Auden while both lived in New York during the war years. This was a rare opportunity to hear the work that was for many years ignored (including by Britten himself) and has received limited performances since.

In some ways this is not surprising - Paul Bunyan makes few attempts to follow operatic conventions. It has no characterisation or realism, there is the disembodied voice of Bunyan (delivered here in a rather sinister Big Brother style by Stephen Fry), and also a melange of musical styles.

Parts of it clearly look forward to mature Britten and the operatic masterpiece Peter Grimes that followed soon after it - most notably in Jonny Inksliger’s song in Act 1 (superbly performed here by Elgan Llyr Thomas) and much of the orchestral writing (there was much to admire in the support given here by the young orchestra with some especially fine woodwind playing).

Alongside this there were passages of folk pastiche, blues (delivered in a memorable first half quartet) and there were clear ‘musical’ numbers (Oklahoma was composed the previous year) and there was a memorable chorus from the massed lumberjacks of Only Boys Aloud (there can rarely have been as many packed onto the W.M.C. stage at one time).

This was a worthy and imaginative attempt from the WNO to realise Britten’s treatment of the American dream and was a valuable contribution to the centenary of arguably our greatest composer of the past 100 years.

Jackie Davies