Fatally sullied by Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus, it’s taken quite a while for poor old Salieri to re-emerge from under the cloud of second-rate poisoner and return to the glow of the musical enlightenment where he belongs. Anyone who has heard the tragic passion of Les Danaïdes will know why to contemporaries he was right up there with Gluck (in fact, that opera was initially passed off as the master’s work until Gluck himself declared that it was all Salierei). Now, thanks to the intrepid Pinchgut Opera and courtesy of a smart, witty production, Sydneysiders are able to discover that in the comic singspiel he was also up there with Mozart.

The Chimney Sweep, or Der Rauchfangkehrer to give it its guttural Germanic title, was written in 1780 for many of the same cast as Die Entfürung aus dem Serail, and it placed similar vocal demands on its singers. It drew favourable comparisons at the time and, for a work that sends up the vagaries of both the Italian and German opera of the day, it’s a darn sight funnier than, for example, Mozart’s The Impresario. It has a novel bourgeois moral slant to it as...