Royal Opera House, London
Running time: 3hrs 15mins
Age Restrictions:
Tickets from £51.00
Netia Jones reimagines Mozart’s comedy of manners through a sharp contemporary lens, where 18th-century romantic trickery meets deeply satirical high-tech deceit. Louise Alder, Simone McIntosh, Mingjie Lei and Huw Montague Rendall are the four lovers, with Gerald Finley as their manipulative game-master Don Alfonso and Emily Pogorelc as Despina. Thomas Hengelbrock conducts.
Spurred on by a bet, two young men hatch a plan to test the fidelity of their girlfriends. What follows is a slippery game of seduction and power, the four lovers plunging into a dizzying world of shifting reality, where truth becomes increasingly unstable.
Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
Bow Street
London
WC2E 9DD
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in the London district of Covent Garden. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Originally called the Theatre Royal, it served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later Handel's first season of operas began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there.
The current building is the third theatre on the site following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1857. The façade, foyer and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The Royal Opera House seats 2,268 people and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery. The proscenium is 12.20 m wide and 14.80 m high. The main auditorium is a Grade 1 listed building.
Travel by train: Charing Cross. Nearest tube: Covent Garden