"The
building of this theatre commenced with such auspices, as to be completed
with a rapidity scarcely to be paralleled in this country, and insomuch
as it was ready for the reception of the public in less than a year
from the destruction of the former edifice. On the 18th of September
1809 the new theatre opened with the Tragedy of Macbeth."
Thus
an early nineteenth-century commentator announced the
opening of the new Covent Garden Theatre, which replaced
the eighteenth-century theatre. Tragically, this beautiful
theatre burned down in the mid-nineteenth century. A third
theatre was completed in 1858.
