Читать книгу The Royal Opera House Guidebook - The Royal Opera House - Страница 14

Dance had already entered Covent Garden programmes in a rather interesting guise. The French dancer and actress Marie Sallé was a great favourite at Covent Garden, appearing in dance sequences in Handel's operas and in her own ballets. She was a revolutionary who shocked her audiences by appearing barefoot in a Grecian-style muslin dress with free-flowing hair (as did Isadora Duncan some 200 years later).

THE SECOND THEATRE

The first major disaster struck in 1808, while the theatre was under the management of actor-manager John Philip Kemble. The theatre burnt to the ground (it is said that a gunshot set the scenery alight). The theatre was rapidly replaced by a new one to a design by Robert Smirke, later the architect of the British

The second Covent Garden theatre