Teatro Real

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Teatro Real east façade

The Teatro Real (literally Royal Theatre) or simply El Real (as it is known colloquially), is a major opera house located in Madrid, Spain.

[edit] History

After thirty-two years of planning and construction, a Royal Order on 7th May 1850 declared the immediate termination of the "Teatro de Oriente" and the building works are finished within five months. The Opera House, located just in front of the Palacio Real, the official residence of the Queen who ordered the construction of the theatre, Isabel II, was finally inaugurated on 10 October 1850, with Donizetti's La Favorite. In 1863, Giuseppe Verdi visited the theater for the Spanish premier of La Forza del Destino. In 1925 the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev performed in the theatre with the presence of Nijinsky and Stravinsky).^[1]

Teatro Real west façade

From 1867 it housed the Madrid Royal Conservatory until 1925 when a Royal Order on 6th December calls for eviction due to the damage that the construction of the Metro de Madrid had caused on the building). The theater reopened in 1966 as a concert theater and the main concert venue of the Spanish National Orchestra and the RTVE Symphony Orchestra. In 1969, the 14th Eurovision Song Contest was held at the theatre, featuring a metal sculpture on stage which was created by surrealist Spanish artist, Salvador Dalí.

In the 1990s, when the theater was remodeled to host opera again and reopened in 1997. The first opera program performed after the reopening was Manuel de Falla’s El sombrero de tres picos and La vida breve. The company notably staged the first modern revival of Vicente Martín y Soler's Il burbero di buon cuore in 2007.

[edit] The company

The theatre stages around seventeen opera titles (both own productions and co-productions with other major European opera houses) per year, as well as two or three major ballets and several recitals. The orchestra of the Teatro Real is the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid. The present musical director is Jesús López-Cobos. The general director will be Gérard Mortier, effective January 2010.