Mozart: Apollo et Hyacinthus – review

Even by the standards of Mozart's astonishingly precocious childhood, this is an extraordinary achievement, a little gem of an opera written when he was just 11 years old. Commissioned by the grammar school in Salzburg as a musical interlude in its annual Latin play, it displays the audacious assurance of a composer at least three times his age. Ian Page , setting out on an epic Mozart series for Linn, conducts a top cast, including tenor Andrew Kennedy, the sopranos Sophie Bevan and Klara Ek and countertenors Lawrence Zazzo and Christopher Ainslie, with the crisp and alert Classical Opera orchestra driven along by the fine harpsichordist Steven Devine.