Royal Opera House, Bow Street, WC2
Apart from the market, Covent Garden’s other great landmark is the Royal Opera House, the theatrical backdrop to the London scenes of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, also seen in Sixties international espionage thriller Where the Spies Are, starring David Niven. Social climbing Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) accepts the offer of a night at the opera here in Woody Allen's Match Point.
While closed for the radical renovations of the Nineties, it became the ‘Fhloston Paradise’ opera house, where the blue alien diva performs, in Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.
There's been a theatre on this site since 1732; the current building being the third, after previous theatres were destroyed by fire in 1808 and 1856. A mixture of straight theatre, opera, ballet and even pantomime was presented until in 1892, It finally became the Royal Opera House. Closed for three years for a major update of its backstage and front-of-house facilities, the spectacular new theatre reopened in 1999.
Trivia: during World War II, the Opera House became a Mecca Ballroom.
The Fifth Element (1997, dir: Luc Besson)
Match Point (2005, dir: Woody Allen)
The Red Shoes (1948, dir: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
Where The Spies Are (1965, dir: Val Guest)
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