Noye's Fludde is the setting of a medieval Miracle play about Noah's ark. Composed in 1957 by Benjamin Britten, it turns this charming play into a funny and dramatic children's opera. The cast includes a chorus of children, an orchestra of children musicians, as well as professional singers and players. It is a short work, but dramatically depicts the events of the Biblical story, through action, hymns, and colorfully expressive music. The Miracle play from which it derives was known as one of the twenty-four Chester Miracle plays. In the city of Chester one year, on the feast of Corpus Christi, twenty-four different plays were given and performed throughout the city as part of the celebrations. Noye's Fludde was one of them. This play was used by Britten as the basis for his libretto.

In the opera, the parts of the animals as well as all of the minor characters, such as the sons of Noah and the friends of Mrs. Noah, are played by children. The latter form a small chorus of "Gossips" which act as comic relief. Mrs. Noah hangs out with her friends the Gossips, drinking and laughing at her husband, until she is dragged kicking and screaming into the ark by her family. Dramatically, the Gossips all drown in the flood, dragged down in their drunken stupor. The music for the entire drinking scene, which builds in dramatic momentum as the storm brews and swells, is lightened by the cackling, comical voices of the Gossips as they revel with Mrs. Noah. The thematic material for the scene contains lopsided, imbalanced rhythms and strange harmonies, as if to suggest their inebriated state. Then the music depicts the growing storm, with powerful surges and thick chromatic grumblings. As the ark begins to move on the swirling waters, the music slowly swirls round and round as well, gradually lifting the ark afloat.

The scoring of the children's orchestra includes handbells, recorders, strings, and percussion. It is these lighter instruments, particularly the recorders, which Britten uses to depict the going forth of the dove, and its return with an olive branch. Toward the close of the opera, the voice of God comes forth out of the heavens and delivers two solemn speeches, poetically describing his new covenant with the Hebrews and all mankind. Soft, low drums, add to the awesomeness of the moment. As the rainbow unfolds across the sky, the entire spectrum of instrumental colors fills the orchestral palette with iridescent light.

Britten's opera contains two old hymns which he uses both to dramatic effect and for structural empahsis. When the storm is at its height, the raging orchestra depicts the thunder, lightning, and driving rain with tumultuous fury. Superimposed over this storm music is the hymn "Eternal Father, strong to save," which the chorus sings with an inexorable steadiness and grand solemnity. The final verse of the hymn, beginning "O Sacred Spirit," comes to the foreground as the storm abates, and is sung in an almost a cappella style. The storm music is in the far background, and the voices are light and prayerful. The other two hymns are "Lord Jesus, Think on Me," and "The Spacious Firmament." The former opens the opera after an orchestral introduction, and is a prayerful supplication for purification. "The Spacious Firmament" is sung alternatively by cast and congregation, as a response to the unfolding of the rainbow. It is this hymn which closes the opera in scintillating grandeur.

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