Tamerlano is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music (1719), with music by George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

 to an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 text by Nicola Francesco Haym

Nicola Francesco Haym

Nicola Francesco Haym was an Italian opera librettist, composer, theatre manager and performer, and numismatist. He is best remembered for adapting texts into libretti for the London operas of George Frideric Handel and Giovanni Bononcini...

, adapted from Agostin Piovene's Tamerlano together with another libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 entitled Bajazet after Nicolas Pradon's Tamerlan, ou La Mort de Bajazet.

One of Handel's major works, he composed it in the space of 20 days in July 1724, in a year in which two more great operas were composed by him: Giulio Cesare

Giulio Cesare

Giulio Cesare in Egitto , commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724...

and Rodelinda.