Music of the night: Steven Blier looks at the staggering challenges and bewitching appeal of Mozart's Queen of the Night.

I came under the power of the Queen of the Night as an eleven-year old. When first I heard "O zittre nicht," ending with that amazing series of scales and arpeggios, I fell in love with opera--bewitched, like Tamino.

Singing that role has to be one of the more bizarre jobs in all of opera. It's a short role-- two arias and a brief ensemble, with one dialogue scene. You begin with "O zittre nicht," which has a recitative and adagio that sit in about the same middle range as the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, then swings into an allegro marziale with a series of increasingly difficult coloratura licks, ending with a staccato ascent to a high F. When you're ...