An opera first staged in Naples in 1840 will open this year's Wexford Festival Opera.
La Vestale by Saverio Mercadante is an example from the early Romantic Italian tradition, said Mr Luigi Ferrari, who is preparing to step down later this year as the festival's artistic director after 10 years in the job.
"Mercadante is as it were the hinge of Italian 19th-century opera - it is no exaggeration to say that without La Vestale there could be no Aïda, or at least not the one we know and love," he said at the launch in Dublin of the line-up for the 53rd festival.
The second main opera production at the festival will be Eva, by Josef Bohuslav Foerster, which was first performed in Prague in 1899.
This comes from the relatively unknown eastern European repertoire, said Mr Ferrari.
The third major work on the programme is Prinzessin Brambilla by Walter Braunfels. It was written in 1909 and revised in the 1920s. It was later banned by the Nazis.
It is this later version which "represents practically the last 'free' expression of Braunfels before he was proscribed", said Mr Ferrari.
He announced a programme of 40 other events, including the production of opera scenes from Rossini's Il Viaggio à Reims, Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Ravel's L'Heure espagnole.
There will also be concerts by the Prague Chamber Choir, 10 lunchtime recitals featuring principal artists from the festival company, and orchestral concerts by the Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra, which will be the festival orchestra this year.
Arts Council chairwoman Ms Olive Braiden said Wexford had built its reputation as an explorer of uncharted territories in the world of opera.