Royal Opera House
- This is an article about the opera house itself. For details of the post-1945 opera and ballet companies, see Royal Opera, London and Royal Ballet, London.
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and performing arts venue in London. It is also sometimes referred to as "Covent Garden" after the London neighbourhood in which it is located. The building serves as the home of the Royal Opera, the Royal Ballet and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.
The current edifice is the third theatre on the site. The façade, foyer and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from a reconstruction in the 1990s. The Royal Opera House seats 2,268 people and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the Amphiteatre gallery. The proscenium is 12.20 m wide and 14.80 m high.
The main auditorium is a Grade I listed building. [1] [2]
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History
The Davenant Patent
The first theatre
In 1728, John Rich, an actor and manager, commissioned The Beggar's Opera from John Gay. The success of the venture provided the capital with its first Theatre Royal (designed by Edward Shepherd) at the site, which opened on December 7, 1732.
For the first hundred years or so of its history the theatre was primarily a playhouse; the Letters Patent granted by Charles II had given Covent Garden and Drury Lane virtually exclusive rights to present spoken drama in London.
The first serious musical works to be heard at Covent Garden were the operas of Handel. From 1735 until his death in 1759 he gave regular seasons there, and many of his operas and oratorios were written for Covent Garden or had their first London performances there. He bequeathed his organ to John Rich, and it was placed in a prominent position on the stage. Unfortunately, it was among many valuable items lost in a fire that destroyed the theatre in 1808.
The second theatre
Rebuilding began in December of the same year, and the second Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (designed by Robert Smirke) opened on September 18, 1809 with a performance of Macbeth followed by a musical entertainment called The Quaker. The management raised seat prices to help recoup the cost of rebuilding, but the move was so unpopular that audiences disrupted performances by beating sticks, hissing, booing and dancing. The Old Price Riots lasted over two months, and the management was finally forced to accede to the audience's demands.
During this time, entertainments were varied; opera and ballet were presented, but not exclusively. In 1843, the Theatres Act broke the patent theatres' monopoly of drama. At that time Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket was the main centre of ballet and opera, but after a dispute with the management in 1846 Michael Costa, conductor at Her Majesty's, transferred his allegiance to Covent Garden, bringing most of the company with him. The auditorium was completely remodelled and the theatre reopened as the Royal Italian Opera on April 6, 1847 with a performance of Rossini's Semiramide.The third theatre
On March 5, 1856, the theatre was again destroyed by fire. Work on the third and present theatre (designed by Edward Middleton Barry) eventually started in 1857 and the new building opened on May 15, 1858 with a performance of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. The theatre became the Royal Opera House in 1892 and the number of French and German works in the repertory increased. Winter and summer seasons of opera and ballet were given, and the theatre was also used for other purposes such as pantomime, recitals and political meetings.
During the First World War the theatre was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works for use as a furniture repository. During the Second World War it became a dance hall. There was a possibility that it would remain so after the war but, following lengthy negotiations, the music publishers Boosey and Hawkes acquired the lease of the building.
David Webster was appointed General Administrator, and Sadler's Wells Ballet was invited to become the resident ballet company. The Covent Garden Opera Trust was created, which laid out plans "to establish Covent Garden as the national centre of opera and ballet, employing British artists in all departments, wherever that is consistent with the maintenance of the best possible standards..." (as quoted in Rosenthal, below)
The Royal Opera House reopened on February 20, 1946 with a performance of The Sleeping Beauty in an extravagant new production designed by Oliver Messel. Webster, with his music director Karl Rankl, immediately began to build a resident company. In December, 1946, they shared their first production, Purcell's The Fairy-Queen, with the ballet company. On January 14, 1947 the Covent Garden Opera Company gave its first performance of Bizet's Carmen.
Reconstruction in the 1990s
Several renovations had taken place to parts of the house in the 1960s, including improvements to the amphitheatre and an extension in the rear, but it became increasingly clear that the House needed some major overhauling.
In 1975 the Labour government gave land adjacent to the Royal Opera House for a long-overdue modernisation, refurbishment and extension. By 1995, sufficient funds had been raised to enable the company to embark upon a major reconstruction of the building, which took place between 1996 and 2000. This involved the demolition of almost the whole site except for the auditorium itself, including several adjacent buildings to make room for a major increase in the overall scale of the complex. In terms of volume, well over half of the complex is new.
The new venue has the same traditional horseshoe-shaped auditorium as before, but with greatly improved technical, rehearsal, office and educational facilities, a new studio theatre called the Linbury Theatre, and much more public space. The inclusion of the adjacent old Floral Hall, long a part of the old Covent Garden Market but in general disrepair for many years, into the actual opera house created a new and extensive public gathering place. The venue is now claimed by the ROH to be the most modern theatre facility in Europe.
Opera at the Royal Opera House after 1945
Events in the history of opera at Covent Garden after 1945 are covered in the article on the Royal Opera.
Ballet at the Royal Opera House After 1945
Events in the history of ballet at Covent Garden after 1945 are covered in the article on the Royal Ballet.
Further reading
- Allen, Mary, A House Divided, Simon & Schuster, 1998
- Beauvert, Thierry, Opera Houses of the World, The Vendome Press, New York, 1995.
- Donaldson, Frances, The Royal Opera House in the Twentieth Century, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1988.
- Haltrecht, Montague,The Quiet Showman: Sir David Webster and the Royal Opera House, Collins, London, 1975.
- Lebrecht, Norman, Covent Garden: The Untold Story: Dispatches from the English Culture War, 1945-2000, Northeastern University Press, 2001.
- Lord Drogheda, et al., The Covent Garden Album, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1981
- Moss, Kate, The House: Inside the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, BBC Books, London, 1995.
- Rosenthal, Harold, Opera at Covent Garden, A Short History, Victor Gollancz, London, 1967.
- Tooley, John, In House: Covent Garden, Fifty Years of Opera and Ballet, Faber and Faber, London, 1999.
- Thubron, Colin (text) and Boursnell, Clive (photos), The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1982.
Trivia
- The opera house was used for shots in the movie The Fifth Element.
- From the 1950s, it was common for long queues to form for opera tickets. The management eventually instituted a "queue ticket" system whereby, for each of the season's 8-week (or so) periods, patrons could queue up until 8 am on the morning at which tickets would go on sale after 10 am. These queues often formed days in advance of the box office opening. The "queue ticket" which was issued was timed for a specific hour of the day. During that time-period patrons could return to actually buy their performance tickets.
External links
- Royal Opera House
- Royal Opera House elevation
- The Royal Ballet
- The Royal Ballet School
- Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport's 1998 Report on funding and management issues at the Royal Opera House
- Guide to events at the Royal Opera House
- Theatre History Articles, Images, and Archive Material
Categories
Opera houses in the United Kingdom | Opera houses | Opera in London | Theatres in London | Grade I listed buildings in London | Westminster | 1660 establishments