Michi Gaigg’s exploration of the azione sacra (sacred drama) Betulia liberata is the latest addition to what is turning out to be something of a purple patch for recordings of early Mozart. Betulia was composed in 1771 for a planned performance in Padua that seems never to have happened; a mooted premiere in Vienna in 1784 failed to come off as well. The story is from the Apocryphal Book of Judith. The Israelites are besieged in the (fictional) city of Bethulia but the widow Judith sneaks out, seduces the enemy general Holofernes and, when he falls asleep, beheads him. Achior, an ally of Holofernes, is horrified when presented with the severed head but ultimately converts to the religion of the Israelites. The libretto being by Metastasio, however, the dramatic action happens outside the city and therefore only in recitative – fans of secco recitative will be in seventh heaven, as there’s reams of it.

The music gives notice, in the Overture depicting the travails of the beseiged Israelites, of the D minor mood that would occasionally resurface in Mozart. Margot Oitzinger as the contralto heroine Giuditta sings with more of an ‘early music’ tone than, say, the more conventionally operatic Hanna Schwarz for Leopold Hager in the Philips Mozart Edition. L’Orfeo Barockorchester play with an attractive thrust and graininess, with solos well taken and horns ringing out gloriously in Carmi’s final aria, ‘Quei moti che senti’. Da capos are invitingly ornamented and a hyperactive harpsichord offers continual commentary. Betulia, composed at an age when the teenage Mozart would surely have rather been hanging around on street corners and discovering girls, naturally lacks the finish and, I daresay, memorability of the later masterworks but nevertheless offers a vivid and dramatic snapshot of this stage in the wunderkind’s astonishing development.