It was surprising to discover that Professor E. J. Dent's English version of The Magic Flute has been in use in this country for thirty-five years or more. His version, made originally for Lilian Baylis's opera at the Old Vic in its semiamateur days, is familiar to all regular opera-goers here, for it has been in constant use since the opening of Sadler's Wells in 1930, and at the Royal Opera House since the establishment of National Opera there. Now, W. H. Auden, the librettist of The Rake's Progress and one of the foremost modern poets, has wandered into the thankless field of opera translation and the English version which comes from his hand and that of his collaborator, Chester Kallman, has already been used in a television performance of The Magic Flute in America on the occasion of the bi-centenary anniversary of Mozart's birth. It was much praised.