Haydn was a somewhat prolific composer (and performer) of operas for his Esterházy patrons. Ever modest, he nevertheless knew the worth of his operatic output, even if he abandoned composing for the theatre on hearing Mozart’s da Ponte operas. This disc provides nigh-on 80 minutes of curtain-raisers and proves that he took this kind of composition every bit as seriously as he did his symphonies and quartets.

Michael Halász and his players from Pardubice (an industrial city about 60 miles east of Prague) are thoroughly decent advocates for this music. Perhaps there’s a hint of unsureness in some trickier string passages but the woodwind offer sweet commentaries and the horns – all-important as the Eszterháza band often didn’t contain trumpets – ring out joyfully. Halász is experienced in Haydn and knows exactly how this music should go, so there’s none of the limpness that marred odd volumes in this label’s symphony cycle.

There are some surprises, too. Sturm and Drang plays no small part in these works – in the Overture to L’isola disabitata, where it portrays the shipwreck that maroons the opera’s two dippy, lovelorn sisters in, for example, or the bipartite opener for Philemon und Baucis, whose austere first part is balanced by an Andante poco allegro of winsome sweetness. And the Prologue to Der Götterrath turns out to be the first movement of Symphony No 50 (just as the Sinfonia to La fedeltà premiata later came to rest as the finale of Symphony No 73). There’s not a duff note here and, despite the odd string lapse, not a moment that isn’t an utterly joyful account of Haydn’s wit and wisdom.