Antonio Vivaldi: Wrote hundreds of concertos

The manuscript for Antonio Vivaldi's Tamerlano lay in a museum in Turin until an expert from the University of Newcastle worked on it.

The cast of Saturday's production will include Amanda Jones, a medical student at the university.

The opera was first performed in Verona's prestigious Teatro Filarmonico in 1735.

The opera is being performed in the university's King's Hall and forms the final event in Newcastle's Early Music Festival.

National Library

It has received several revivals in Italy in recent years, but this will be the opera's first ever performance in this country.

The manuscript of Tamerlano is housed in the National Library in Turin.

The edition used in Saturday's performance was specially prepared by Dr Eric Cross, Newcastle University dean of cultural affairs, for the work's American premiere in New York in 2000.

Dr Cross said: "It lay in a monastery for many years.

"It was bought by the university library in Turin in the 1930s, then it was identified, but even after that, very few people have worked on it since."

Italian Baroque composer Vivaldi was born in 1678.

He wrote hundreds of concertos which include some of the earliest programme music, as well as secular cantatas, sacred music and operas.