The Mozartists

The Mozartists emerged early in 2017 as a distinct branch of Classical Opera, the company Ian Page had established years earlier to probe the theatrical output of Mozart alongside his era’s other composers. By incorporating orchestral repertoire, the new ensemble broadened the parent organization’s scope and became tightly linked to Page’s long-running Mozart 250 initiative.

Page’s own path began as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, continued with studies in English literature at the University of York, and led to training at the Royal Academy of Music. He gained practical experience through apprenticeships at opera houses in Britain and Sweden, after which he launched Classical Opera and led most of Mozart’s stage works there, among them the original version of Mitridate, re di Ponto, K. 87, and a newly completed edition of Zaide, K. 344, both introduced in world premieres. The Mozartists were formed when Page and Classical Opera extended their activities into symphonic programming through the Mozart 250 concert series, launched in 2015 to trace Mozart’s biography year by year, beginning with his 1765 visit to London and encompassing the music of his contemporaries. The project is set to end in 2041, the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death.

Under that framework the ensemble’s 2017 programs surveyed the year 1767, the season in which the eleven-year-old Mozart first turned to opera, and placed his efforts beside pieces by J.C. Bach, Thomas Arne, and Florian Gassmann. Those concerts also featured the composer’s earliest theatrical scores, Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots, K. 35, and Apollo et Hyacinthus, K. 38. The group entered the recording studio almost immediately, joining the Signum label and issuing Perfido!, a program of seldom-heard arias by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven performed with soprano Sophie Bevan. In 2018 the Mozartists released the double album Mozart in London, which documented both the music Mozart himself produced during his fifteen-month childhood stay in the city and the works he would have encountered there, several presented in first recordings. Two further albums devoted to the Sturm und Drang style of the 1760s and 1770s appeared in 2020, followed in 2021 by complete recordings of Arne’s Artaxerxes and Niccolò Jommelli’s Il Vologeso.