The idea of Mozart's sublime piece of panto opera sung by Renaissance experts accompanied only by a piano does not sound particularly appealing.

But the opera was given a superb performance last weekend at a fundraiser for the Brighton Early Music Festival.

Flute is bedevilled by enormous amounts of recitative words - all in German - which can be omitted. But it does need some explanation of the storyline as we follow Tamino and Papegeno on their path to enlightenment.

This was done using a specially commissioned narration, read by Peter Phillips and spoken in English. Straightforward and with a nice vein of humour, the narration readily set the scene for each of the arias, duets and ensembles to come.

Janet Coxwell made for a very raunchy Pamine and Deborah Roberts - boss of Brighton Consort and co-founder of the Early Music Festival - was a wonderfully arrogant and feisty Queen of the Night, dressed in gold and black.

Andrew Carwood's superb tenor voice gave Prince Tamino great nobility while counter tenor Patrick Craig made a good high priest and went on to don female dress as Papageno.

Sure, with just a piano accompaniment you do lose that rich Mozart orchestral score but Alex Soddy's performance lacked none of the sounds which make this opera so entertaining.

This was proof that opera can be brought splendidly to life without going to the expense of a full orchestra.