First performed on 18 June 1958 at that year's Aldeburgh Festival, it is based on the 15th-century Chester "mystery" or "miracle" play which recounts the Old Testament story of Noah's Ark.

By the mid-1950s Britten had established himself as a major composer, both of operas and of works for mixed professional and amateur forces – his mini-opera The Little Sweep (1949) was written for young audiences, and used child performers.

Noye's Fludde was composed as a project for television; to the Chester text Britten added three congregational hymns, the Greek prayer Kyrie eleison as a children's chant, and an Alleluia chorus.

[15] In 1952, although Britten's collaboration with Crozier had ended, he used the Chester plays book as the source text for his Canticle II, based on the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Britten told Ford that he had "for some months or a year vaguely been thinking of doing something with the [Chester] miracle plays", and agreed to write an opera for A-R's 1958 summer term of school programmes.

[20] After the opening congregational hymn "Lord Jesus, think on me", the spoken Voice of God addresses Noye, announcing the forthcoming destruction of the sinful world.

Rain begins to fall, building to a great storm at the height of which the first verse of the naval hymn "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" is heard from the ark.

[22][n 3] To Pollard's edition of the Noah play's text, he added three congregational Anglican hymns: "Lord Jesus, think on me"; "Eternal Father, strong to save"; and "The spacious firmament on high".

A-R decided to withdraw from the project, which was then taken up by Associated Television (ATV), whose chairman Lew Grade personally took responsibility for signing the contract and urged that Britten should complete the opera.

[33] For the first time in any of his works involving amateurs, Britten envisaged a large complement of child performers among his orchestral forces,[33] led by what Graham described as "the professional stiffening" of a piano duet, string quintet (two violins, viola, cello and bass), recorder and a timpanist.

She recalled that "by great good fortune I had once had to teach Women's Institute percussion groups during a wartime 'social half hour', so I was able to take him into my kitchen and show him how a row of china mugs hanging on a length of string could be hit with a large wooden spoon.

[38] Several commentators, including Michael Kennedy, Christopher Palmer and Humphrey Carpenter, have noted the affinity between the sound of Britten's use of the handbells and the gamelan ensembles he had heard first-hand in Bali in 1956.

[34][n 8] Mrs Noye's Gossips were originally to be performed by girls from a Suffolk school, but when the headmistress heard rumours about the "dissolute" parts they were to play, she withdrew her pupils.

[46] Graham, recalling the premiere some years later, wrote: "The large orchestra (originally 150 players)[n 9] ... were massed around the font of Orford Church while the opera was played out on a stage erected at the end of the nave.

"[34] Philip Hope-Wallace, writing for The Manchester Guardian, observed that "Charles Mackerras conducted the widespread forces, actually moving round a pillar to be able to control all sections in turn.

"[47] Martin Cooper of The Daily Telegraph noted: "The white walls of Orford Church furnished an ideal background to the gay colours of Ceri Richards's costumes and the fantastic head-dresses of the animals.

[33] Andrew Porter in Opera magazine also found the music touched "by high inspiration"; the evening was "an unforgettable experience ... extraordinarily beautiful, vivid and charming, and often deeply moving".

[58] In the United States, after a radio broadcast in New York City on 31 July 1958, the School of Sacred Music of Union Theological Seminary staged the US premiere on 16 March 1959.

Britten suggested that in the absence of handbells a set of tubular bells in E flat in groups of twos and threes could be played by four or six children with two hammers each to enable them to strike the chords.

"[63] In the UK, Christopher Ede, producer of the landmark performances of the Chester mystery plays during the Festival of Britain, directed Britten's opera in Winchester Cathedral, 12–14 July 1960.

[65] In 1971 the Aldeburgh Festival once again staged Noye's Fludde at Orford;[67] a full television broadcast of the production, transferred to Snape Maltings, was made by the BBC, conducted by Steuart Bedford under the composer's supervision, with Brannigan resuming the role of Noah, Sheila Rex as his wife, and Lumsden as the Voice of God.

[77] An Aldeburgh Festival production as a finale to the centenary year was staged in November, on the eve of Britten's 100th birthday anniversary, in his home town of Lowestoft.

[81] The approach to the ancient story of Noah through an essentially medieval convention, realized in Elizabethan language of a fairly lowly order, was a splendid formula for arousing children's sense of the fitting ...

Noye's Fludde has been described by the musicologist Arnold Whittall as a forerunner of Britten's church parables of the 1960s,[83][84] and by the composer's biographer Paul Kildea as a hybrid work, "as much a cantata as an opera".

[33] Several episodes of the opera – such as "the grinding conflict of Britten's passacaglia theme against Dykes's familiar hymn-tune in the storm" – introduces listeners and the youthful performers to what Roseberry terms "a contemporary idiom of dissonance", in contrast to the "outworn style" of most music written for the young.

"[87] The opera begins with a short, "strenuous" instrumental prelude,[88] which forms the basis of the musical accompaniment to the opening congregational hymn; its first phrase is founded on a descending bass E-B-F, itself to become an important motif.

[92] The music which accompanies the construction work heavily involves the children's orchestra, and includes recorder trills, pizzicato open strings, and the tapping of oriental temple-blocks.

As Noye leaves, the full orchestra provides a final fortissimo salute, the opera then concluding peacefully with B flat chimes of handbells alternating with extended G major string chords – "a hauntingly beautiful close", says Roseberry.

[103][n 14] Britten resisted such a proposal: "I think if you consider a performance of this work in a big church with about fifty or more children singing, you will agree that the orchestra would sound totally inadequate if it were only piano duet, a few strings and a drum or two."

[105] After the score had been published, and in the face of an imminent performance in Ettal, Britten suggested that he could attempt to rewrite the music for a handbell ensemble in D, since sets in that key were more common than in E flat.