The Royal Opera House is much better known as Covent Garden - after the square on which it is situated. It is the home stage for the Royal Ballet of London and the orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre opened on this site in 1732, and was one of two London play theatres (the other was the equally famous Drury Lane Theatre). The two theatres were irreconcilable rivals and often staged the the same play at the same time. The Covent Garden stage was used for dramas, pantomimes, ballets and operas, including Handel's operas.
In 1808 the theatre building was destroyed by fire, but it was quickly rebuilt again. A second fire occurred in 1856, and the building was rebuilt in 1858 designed by Edward Middleton Barry. The last major renovation was carried out on the theatre in the 1990s.
Since the late 18th century, Covent Garden has gained a reputation as one of the finest theatres Europe. Italian operas predominated in the 19th century, the theatre at one time even bore the as the Royal Italian Opera. The theatre's then artistic director, Michael Costa, performed even operas in Italian that had been written in French.
But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the trend changes. A prominent place in the repertoire is occupied by operas and ballets by English authors; works by Russian composers are staged (Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky, M. P. Mussorgsky, N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, A. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, A. P. Borodin and others). Since the end of the 19th century the tradition of performing operas in the original language has been established, which has survived to this day.
The Covent Garden stage has at various times hosted such celebrities as Maria Salle, Edmund Kinsey, Edmund Kinnick and others. Maria Salle, Edmund Keane and Sarah Siddons.
