Two centuries after its completion, Samuel Arnold's 1802 oratio Hymn of Adam and Eve will premiere at the Regent on Saturday.
Arnold signed off the manuscript on January 28 1802 and expected to begin rehearsals immediately. Ill health forced him to cancel rehearsals and no performance took place.
The manuscript was eventually deposited in the Royal College of Music in London where Palmerston North's Professor Robert Hoskins came across it when he was researching for his PhD thesis, The Theatre Music of Samuel Arnold: A Thematic Index (1998).
At Saturday's performance, musical director Guy Donaldson will conduct the Renaissance Singers and Manawatū Sinfonia, and musical director Roy Tankersley will conduct Schola Sacra Choir in A New Creation, the Hymn of Adam and Eve and Haydn's Creation.
Coloratura soprano Pasquale Orchard is Eve and baritone Lindsay Yeo is Adam, with sopranos Shayna Tweed and Jennifer Little in Adam and Eve.
