Royal Italian
Opera
on 6 April 1847 with a performance of Rossini's
Semiramide
.
In 1852, Louis Antoine Jullien the French eccentric composer of light
music and conductor presented an opera of his own composition,
Pietro il
Grande
. Five performances were given of the 'spectacular', including live
horses on the stage and very loud music. Critics considered it a complete
failure and Jullien was ruined and fled to America.
Costa and his successors
presented all operas in Italian, even those originally written in French,
German or English, until 1892, when Gustav Mahler presented the debut of
Wagner's Ring cycle. The word "Italian" was then quietly dropped from the
name of the opera house.
On 5 March 1856, the theatre was again destroyed by fire. Work on the
third theatre, designed by Edward Middleton Barry, started in 1857 and the
new building, which still remains as the nucleus of the present theatre, was
built by Lucas Brothers
and opened on 15 May 1858 with a performance
of Meyerbeer's
Les Huguenots
.
The Royal English Opera company under the management of Louisa
Pyne and William Harrison, made their last performance at Theatre Royal,
Drury Lane on 11 December 1858 and took up residence at the theatre on 20
December 1858 with a performance of Michael Balfe's
Satanella
and
continued at the theatre until 1864.
207
The theatre became the
Royal Opera House
(ROH) in 1892, and the
number of French and German works offered increased. Winter and summer
seasons of opera and ballet were given, and the building was also used for
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.
From 1934 to 1936, Geoffrey Toye was Managing Director, working
alongside the Artistic Director, Sir Thomas Beecham. Despite early successes,
Toye and Beecham eventually fell out, and Toye resigned.
During the Second World War the ROH became a dance hall. There
was a possibility that it would remain so after the war but, following lengthy
negotiations, the music publishersBoosey & 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 and 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 ..."
The Royal Opera House reopened on 20 February 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 14 January 1947, the Covent Garden Opera Company gave its
first performance of Bizet's
Carmen
.
Before the grand opening, the Royal Opera House presented one of the
Robert Mayer Children's concerts on Saturday, 9 February 1946.
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