Everyone thinks Haydn wrote two oratorios, the Creation and the Seasons - nobody knows Il ritorno di Tobia. I have studied it for many years; I have only come to know it in the last few days. The piece is a quite incredible work! (...) The young Haydn found a musical language of his own, not in the sense of a narrative but in the sense of a depiction of emotional states and that is where he uses all the musical rhetoric, uses the most sophisticated key modulations, things that had not existed before...

It was in much the same terms as Nikolaus Harnoncourt before the 2013 Salzburg performance of Il ritorno di Tobia in the Felsenreitschule that the reviewer of the work's premiere expressed himself in the Vienna newspaper K.k. allergnädigst privilegierte Realzeitung of April 6, 1775. "The famous Kapellmeister Hayden having set to music his (...) Oratorio, entitled: The Return of Tobias has won general acclaim. and once again exhibited his familiar skill in the most advantageous manner. Expression, Nature and Art were so finely interwoven in his work, that the listeners must love the one and admire the other. Especially his choruses burned with a fire that otherwise was Handel’s alone, in a word the entire exceptionally numerous audience was enraptured..."
Il ritorno di Tobia was commissioned by the Tonkünstlergesellschaft zum Unterhalt der Wittwen and Waysen, “Society of Artists in Music for the Support of Widows and Orphans", as the theatre handbill observes. Haydn, who had written his new work in support of his application to join the Society, personally directed the two charity performances in Vienna's Theater am Kärntnertor. The libretto, written in Italian to accord with contemporary taste, was the work of Viennese court poet Giovanni Gastone Boccherini, a brother of the noted composer. He drew on the Book of Tobit a late addition to Hebrew scripture, which describes the eventful journey of Tobias returning from Nineveh ro cure his farher Tobir of his blindness. a popular rheme in rhe music and picrorial art of rhe 17th and 18th centuries.
The premiere performance of Joseph Haydn’s first orotorio Il ritorno di Tobia was an ambitious undertaking with 180 performers, most of them drown from the imperial capital; the work would have been beyond the resources of the Esterhazy orchestra alone. The evening was a great success, both artistically and financially: 1,712 florins - corresponding to a five-figure sum in present-day euros or dollars - went to the Musicsl Artists’ Society for its charitable work. Haydn had offered his services free of charge - for that matter, the present recording was made at a fundraising concert, as will be related - and complained four years later in a letter to the Secretary of the Society that his acceptance as an External Member had still not been confirmed. The remission of the joining fee of 300 florins, wrote Haydn, was something thst "I regard as a very necessary Compensation, in that I have earned the Society 1000 fl. with my New ond freely donated Ritorno di Tobia".
The suggestion that Haydn should furthermore commit himself in writing to compose at the request of the Society Oratorium, Cantate, Sinfoni oder Cori, with the assurance that they would never burden him with "indiscreet" requests for such vocal or instrumental works, infuriated the eminent composer. His brusque letter concluded with his rebuttAl of The musical Artists’ Society. In the years thst followed, "The return of Tobias" spread throughout Europe, with numbers from the oratorio being sung in such cities as Rome, Leipzig and Lisbon. Nine yeors after the premiere, in 1784, there was a revival of the oratorio - this time in the Burgtheater - in a version to which Haydn hsd added two new choruses while tightening up the overture, recitatives and some of the arias. The soloists were among Vienna’s leading lights: Nancy Storace, Mozarts later Susanna, sang Anna, while the role of Tobit went to Stefano Mandini, Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro. For all that, its success could no longer build on that of the first performance. In 1808, Haydn’s pupil ond colleague Sigismund Neukomm, who had previously prepared the piano reductions of the Creation and the Seasons, tried a new presentation of Tobias - with no greater success. Not Till 1963 did Il ritorno di Tobia appear in print as part of the complete edition of Haydn's works.

The story
The oratorio, comparable to opera seria in its sequence of recitatives and arias, is written for a cast of five: Tobit, a pious Jew, blinded by hot swallow’s dung; Anna, his wife; Tobias, their son; Raffaelle, the Archangel Raphael (incognito as Azariah), travelling companion of Tobias; Sarah, widow of seven husbands killed by an evil spirit and later wife of Tobias.
The first part begins after the one-movement Sinfonia - described by Haydn in a later  letter to his publisher Artaria as an "overture" - with the plea of Anna and Tobit for the safe return of their son. Anna is distraught, Tobit seeks to console her. In a dream, he has seen his son married to Sarah, daughter of his cousin, the very Sarah whose spirit has killed each of her husbands, Anna adds. Surely her son too has fallen victim to this demon. Anna accuses her own husband Tobit of having sent Tobias away against her wishes. Azariah, the companion of Tobias, appears on the horizon - alone: a further sign to Anna that her son is dead.
Raffaelle (as Azariah) now relates past events: how Tobias overcame a monster in the Tigris and disembowelled it - in search of its heart and gall bladder - and married Sarah at divine prompting, finally conquering the evil spirit Asmodeo by burning the heart of the monster before commencing his present journey home. In his first aria, Raffaelle promises Anna that upon his return Tobias will restore his father's sight. Anna and the chorus of Hebrews praise God in the aria "Ah gran Dio!”, one of the numbers added in 1784.
Sarah and Tobias approach his parents’ house. The sight of home provides the occasion for a love aria by Tobias, “Quando mi dona un cenno", answered by Sarah’s praise of God and her husband. Tobias falls into the arms of his parents, Sarah is welcomed as a daughter-in-law. The first part ends with the concerted plea that God may restore Tobit's eyesight.
Part Two begins in joyful expectation that Tobit will soon be healed. Sarah praises her new family in the aria "Non parmi esser fra gl’uomini" - which Nikolaus Harnoncourt considers The "high point of the oratorio" in sound, music and spirit, with Haydn having captured "the moment of enchantment" in the encounter between Sarah and her new family, with the "magic of sounds never yet heard even in the symphonic prelude”, in the words of the conductor as quoted by Monika Mertl in the programme notes of the Salzburg Festival production. The healing process itself is the centrepiece of the second part. Just before it, Anna sings a wonderful "nightmare” aria, accompanied by cor anglais and trombones, “Come in sogno", which anticipates the course of events: from darkness to light, from F minor to F major.
Tobias heals his father by pouring the monster’s gall into his eyes. Tobit cannot bear the light, he cries out in pain, says Harnoncourt: "This is a great scene, which receives quite drastic musical portrayal. First he complains of the painful treatment, then when it is successful he is so dazzled by the unfamiliar brightness of the sun that he would prefer to remain blind.” On the advice of Raffaelle, Sarah covers Tobit's eyes first with a black cloth and then with progressively lighter cloths, till he grows accustomed to the sunlight. When the family offer to reward Raffaelle for his services, he reveals himself as an archangel. The oratorio ends with praise of the Lord.

A “gift of Time”
The present Salzburg performance of Il ritorno di Tobia is due to an initiative of Orchestra La Scintilla at the Zurich Opera: this specialized ensemble for early music, which emerged from the opera orchestra in 1998, offered its long-standing mentor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his wife Alice honorary membership of the orchestra, in grateful acknowledgement of an association dating back to the 1970s and their legendary Monteverdi cycle. This was linked with a generous "gift of time” to the celebrated conductor, consisting of a concert to be played free of charge, including the necessary rehearsals. In the spring of 2012, Harnoncourt promised to claim his "absolutely unique gift” and to present Joseph Haydn’s early oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia in a benefit concert at the 2013 Salzburg Festival, "where nobody asks for money, not the hall, not the conductor, not the choir, not the soloists". The proceeds of the concert would go to three multi-cultural youth projects in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The audience paid tribute to the work put in, as can be heard, with generous opplause - particularly for the Arnold Schoenberg Choir. The press reaction was more mixed. Heidemarie Klabacher of Vienna's Der Standard declared the Felsenreitschule too large for the "intimate story” but praised the performers: "Contralto Ann Hallenberg song the spiky coloraturas with wicked delight. Bassist Ruben Drole endowed his role with profound depth, warm timbre ond great expressiveness. Heavenly moments were bestowed by soprano Valentina Farcas as Sarah. The title role of Tobia was shaped by Mauro Peter with his radiant tenor, still supple even on high notes. The hand-picked soloists were given a richly varied musical backdrop by Nikolous Harnoncourt and the orchestra.” Eleonore Büning gave a more critical verdict on the conductor in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “All the work's contradictions are conscientiously deployed by Harnoncourt, who dismembers every recitative, relishes each strange oboe-cor-anglais sound mixture and celebrates even the most conventional modulations with ritual solemnity. Yet no spark leaps the gap, not even when the long-heralded miracle takes place and major-key light floods in.” She found praise only for Sen Guo (as the archangel Raphael) and Ann Hallenberg (as the mother) in the solo quintet. The Vienna daily Die Presse found "The result interesting rather Than exciting" and the critic of the Salzburger Nachrichten Karl Harb concluded "This Return does not come easy. But who other than Harnoncourt could convert the necessary artistic ‘hard work' into an enjoyable journey of discovery?"
How did Nikolaus Harnoncourt put it to his audience before the concert? "You must immerse yourselves and commit yourselves to something that we have already committed ourselves to during the rehearsals and again now during the performonce. That is not easy to hear, but if you hear it, you will also feel something."