All three composers represented here were active in opera but these scenes and arias were composed as stand-alone works and represent a side of each man’s activities that doesn’t so often get an outing. The music ranges from the child Mozart, based in London in 1764 65, to Haydn, also in London three decades later, and Beethoven, in perhaps the most famous of these scenas.

Although divorced from their operatic settings, there is still drama to be divined in these works, and Sophie Bevan doesn’t sell any of them short. She is, of course, hugely experienced in the music of this period and brings a characteristically vivid intensity to each piece, tempered by an endearing touch of breathiness in the voice. The Mozartists are a brand-new spin-off from Ian Page’s Classical Opera company and accompany with sensitivity and a welcome graininess to the string tone, which contrasts with the sleekness cultivated by some Continental ensembles.

Ah! perfido is not uncommon on disc and there are a number of collections of Mozart’s concert arias. Haydn less so: his wonderful Solo e pensoso appeared on Vol 3 of Giovanni Antonini’s nascent symphony cycle (Alpha, 5/17), sung by Francesca Aspromonte with a winning purity that offers a subtly different outlook to Bevan’s on the piece. Bernarda Fink took on the Scena di Berenice on a disc featuring Symphonies Nos 91 and 92 with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 5/04) – one of the finest Haydn discs made in the run-up to the anniversary year of 2009; Fink winds up the drama even further than Bevan but Jacobs’s imaginative accompanimental touches are something else again.