Qualla: Royal Opera House

Royal Opera House: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Londres_048..jpg: Simdaperce derivative work: SilkTork (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. On 25 March 1833, Edmund Kean was playing Othello on the Covent Garden stage when he collapsed. Two months later, he was dead. Kean was already the most famous Shakespearean actor of his generation, a man who could empty London streets when he played Richard III. The role he died playing required him to murder Desdemona and then murder himself with a knife, and he never made it to the murder. The Royal Opera House is full of such stories because three different theatres have stood on this Covent Garden site since 1732, and two of them burned down. Handel premiered operas here. The first ballet in London was danced here. Queen Victoria sat with Napoleon III in a private box. A David Hockney portrait that hung on the wall for decades was sold to save the company during the pandemic. The current auditorium dates from 1858, the rest of the building from a 1990s reconstruction.

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Image: Londres_048..jpg: Simdaperce derivative work: SilkTork (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Opera House: Handel and the Beggar's Opera

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and Augustus Charles Pugin (1762–1832) (after) John Bluck (fl. 1791–1819), Joseph Constantine Stadler (fl. 1780–1812), Thomas Sutherland (1785–1838), J. Hill, and Harraden (aquatint engravers), Public domain. John Rich, actor-manager at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, commissioned The Beggar's Opera from John Gay in 1728. The show was such a success that it gave him capital enough to build a new theatre on what had once been an ancient convent garden, near the piazza Inigo Jones had lai...

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Image: Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and Augustus Charles Pugin (1762–1832) (after) John Bluck (fl. 1791–1819), Joseph Constantine Stadler (fl. 1780–1812), Thomas Sutherland (1785–1838), J. Hill, and Harraden (aquatint engravers) | Public domain

Royal Opera House: Old Price Riots

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Viva-Verdi, CC BY-SA 4.0. The second theatre, designed by Robert Smirke, opened on 18 September 1809 with Macbeth. John Philip Kemble, the actor-manager, raised seat prices to recoup rebuilding costs and an increased ground rent from the Duke of Bedford. The audience refused to accept it. For over two mon...

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Image: Viva-Verdi | CC BY-SA 4.0

Royal Opera House: From Italian Opera to Royal Opera

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George Cruikshank (27 September 1792 – 1 February 1878), Public domain. Joseph Grimaldi made his name on this stage as the great pantomime clown, introducing the pantomime dame and starting the tradition of audience singing. By 1821 the physical toll had ruined him; he could barely walk. By 1828 he was penniless. Drury Lane held a benefit concert for...

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Image: George Cruikshank (27 September 1792 – 1 February 1878) | Public domain

Royal Opera House: Lifting the Floral Hall

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Russ London (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Between 1997 and 1999, the company reconstructed almost the entire site at a cost of two hundred and thirteen million pounds, under the chairmanship of Sir Angus Stirling, with Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones leading the architecture. The horseshoe auditorium itself was kept, but m...

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Image: Russ London (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Opera House: Selling Hockney

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Laika ac from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. In October 2020 the Royal Opera House announced it had lost sixty percent of its income to COVID-19 restrictions. To survive, the company put up for auction a 1971 David Hockney portrait of Sir David Webster, the general administrator who had rebuilt the company after the Second ...

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Image: Laika ac from UK | CC BY-SA 2.0