OPENING NIGHT

In a city obsessed with the new, Kannagi Desai steps into Mumbai's Royal Opera House & onto a stage where memory, luxury, & legacy meet in perfect rehearsal

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There are buildings, and then there is presence. You feel the difference in the hush that falls as you enter the Royal Opera House, nestled just off Charni Road in South Bombay, opposite the bustling Girgaon Chowpatty and tucked between residential quarters and jewellery markets. Its location feels almost improbable — a palace of performance quietly embedded in the everyday pulse of the city. Today, it remains under the guardianship of the royal family of Gondal, who were instrumental in its revival, anchoring its legacy with a deeply personal stake in its future.

A STAR, REBORN

Long before the skyline bristled with concrete and chrome, Mumbai nurtured a culture of performance. In the early 20th century, opera was not a colonial indulgence but a cosmopolitan norm. Audiences flocked to see travelling Italian troupes perform Verdi and Puccini, while Parsi theatre and Shakespearean drama shared billing with Hindustani classical concerts. Commissioned by Maharaja Bhavsinhji of Gondal and designed by British theatre impresario Maurice Bandmann, the Opera House opened its doors in 1916 with La Traviata — a declaration of artistic ambition, carved in stucco and crowned in Murano glass.

For decades, it thrived. Royals, artists, and the city’s elite attended in velvet and pearls. But as the decades passed and the city’s cultural focus shifted, the Opera House dimmed. By the 1990s, it had become a ghost. Its once-regal facade was fenced in scaffolding as rumours of its conversion into a mall, a commercial office, or worse, its demolition, floated like dust motes in the auditorium light.