Drawing on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the slight “plot” of Philemon und Baucis recounts the visit of Jupiter and Mercury (both speaking roles) to the home of Philemon and Baucis, whose virtue alone has saved their lascivious, thieving fellow-villagers from the gods’ wrath. As a reward, Jupiter restores the old couple’s son Aret and his bride Narcissa – struck down by a thunderbolt – to life, and elevates them from peasants to priests. Most of the music for the prologue and pageant was destroyed in the Eszterháza fire of 1779; and except for the Overture – an agitated D minor movement with a gavotte-like D major coda – and one aria, the opera itself went missing until a manuscript copy turned up in the Paris Conservatoire in 1950. In it, the original puppet opera had been tricked out with brief instrumental numbers by Gluck (a ballet from Paride ed Elena) and Carlo d’Ordoñez (a dulcet minuet), and an aria from Haydn’s own Il mondo della luna. HC Robbins Landon quickly made a performing version and arranged a recording. Nearly 60 years later, this second recording broadly follows the Landon edition, with the prologue’s nine tediously bickering gods wisely condensed into a crisp(ish) dialogue between Jupiter and Mercury.

Only the most fanatical Haydn partisan would claim this slender marionette opera, amounting to less than 40 minutes’ music, as a neglected masterpiece. But there’s a vigorous “storm” chorus at the opening, while the five arias and one duet, almost all in Andante tempo, have a modest charm – rather more than that in the case of Aret’s G minor aria, fashioned as a duet for tenor and oboe over rustling strings, and the exquisite aria for Narcissa filched from Il mondo della luna. Alexandra Reinprecht sings this appealingly, despite Manfred Huss’s determined tempo. Christoph Genz, as Philemon, deploys his slightly dry, reedy tenor with elegance. Jan Petryka is touching as Aret, while Maren Engelhardt, with an attractive glint in her tone, makes her mark in Baucis’s aria. Manfred Huss directs his ever-alert period band with verve and aplomb, though at times – and not only in Narcissa’s aria – I wish he would allow the music a little more space. The dialogue, translated in the informative booklet, is convincingly delivered, with the gravelly bass of Frank Hoffmann’s Jupiter nicely contrasted with Hermann Beil’s ironic, tenorish Mercury. A disc, then, of gentle pleasures, and a welcome late addition to the Haydn anniversary celebrations.