November 3 ,2026
The Opera House has had a complete turnaround from depletion to the returning of glory days.
Ten years after its restoration, India’s only surviving Opera House has turned from a ruin into a cultural meeting ground.
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When conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah first stepped into the Royal Opera House in 2007, she felt she had walked onto the set of Great Expectations. “It was really like walking into some strange dream, like Miss Havisham’s mansion,” she recalled. The chandeliers were hung with cobwebs and the plaster was peeling. Steel girders had corroded so badly that, she says, “one could peel layers of the metal with one’s bare fingers.”
The roof leaked, balconies leaned, and the south staircase had collapsed.
Today the 575-seat auditorium hosts Sufi poetry, jazz, literary conversations and diplomatic roundtables, often in the same week. This October, the building marks ten years since it reopened, and 110 years since it first opened its doors.
This iconic landmark has had a change of hands
Conceived in 1908, inaugurated by King George V in 1911 and completed in 1916, the Opera House brought together European and Indian architectural influences. Its stage hosted figures such as Bal Gandharva, Master Dinanath, Jyotsnabai Bhole and Prithviraj Kapoor.
Films started being screened from 1917, and by 1925 the theatre had moved away from drama to become a full-time cinema hall. Ideal Pictures Ltd acquired it in 1935 and renovated it the following year. “This was part of a broader change in the entertainment landscape, as cinema became an increasingly popular form of public entertainment,” said HH Maharaja Himanshusinhji of Gondal.
His family acquired the building in 1952, when Maharaja Shri Vikramsinhji of Gondal bought it. “It was a natural fit with the family’s interest in preserving India’s cultural heritage,” he said. Changing viewing habits and the decline of single-screen cinemas eventually took their toll, and the theatre closed in the 1990s. It then sat idle for roughly a quarter of a century.
His late father, Maharaja Shri Jyotendrasinhji, commissioned the restoration in 2007. “There was a strong sense that a building of this historical importance should not be allowed to disappear from the city’s cultural life,” said Himanshusinhji.
His mother, Rajmatasaheb Kumud Kumari, supervised the work, with the support of family friend Ashish Doshi (honorary director, Royal Opera House) and Lambah’s conservation expertise.
When asked why did it turn it into a cultural space over a theatre as it last served, he said, “Converting it into a multiplex or another commercial development might have given it a different use, but it would not have fulfilled our vision for its revival. Our vision was to restore the Opera House as a living cultural space, rather than preserve it simply as a historic building.”
Raising a ruin from scratch
Lambah’s first problem was finding someone willing to touch the structure. She approached five of the city’s best structural engineers, and each turned the job down as too risky. “Finally Satish Dhupelia saw the building, fell in love with it and worked with me to put back the historic structure,” she shared.
A century of monsoons had done most of the damage. Water had seeped into the walls and right down to the basement, rusting the embedded steel, which expanded and cracked the lime-concrete slabs. Wet rot had eaten the roof timbers. The lower balcony was so distressed that it needed emergency propping.
Earlier renovations had done their own harm. The 1970s makeover covered up the side balconies with plywood, tore out the neo-Baroque ceiling for a pseudo-Art Deco one, and blocked the windows for acoustic panelling.
Heritage permission came from the Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee in 2009, and work began in 2010. In 2012, the World Monuments Fund listed the Opera House among the world’s endangered monuments. But because the building was privately owned, no funds came with the listing. “Maharani Saheb Kumud Kumari and her husband were very clear on restoring this space as a cultural venue and put in their own funds,” Lambah shared.
The first phase took about two and a half years. It covered emergency propping, roof repairs, consolidation of the balconies, strengthening of the jack arches, and replacement of distressed girders with salvaged steel from demolition yards in Mumbai and Gujarat. Permission for the interiors came in 2013, and that work ran from 2015 to 2016.
Reconstructing the original interior became a piece of detective work. Lambah’s team found a catalogue printed in 1917 with black-and-white images of the Baroque interiors, side balconies included. Plaster cherubs and mouldings found in storage helped them recreate the decorative details. Paint scrapes and archival records guided the colour scheme. Even Hindi cinema helped. “A painstaking research into some old Hindi films revealed the original design of the viewing balconies,” she says, referring to the 1970s film Prem Kahani, which was shot in the building.
Specialists worked on the details. The Osler chandeliers, which once hung in David Sassoon’s house, were restored, and material conservators Anupam Sah and Manikandan restored the painted panels in the foyer. Swati Chandgadkar worked on the ruby-red stained glass, and craftsmen from Gujarat restored the stonework on the facade and the lime plasters.
The brief was also to make a working theatre. “The stage mechanics were upgraded, fire fighting systems introduced, state-of-the-art acoustics, sound systems and stagecraft,” Lambah says, “while ensuring that the spatial integrity of the interiors was not compromised.” Himanshusinhji echoes the balance. The family kept the royal boxes, the proscenium stage and the chandeliers, he says, while adding modern acoustics, lighting and air-conditioning. The work was recognised with a 2017 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation.
A glorious second innings
The Opera House reopened in October 2016 with the Mumbai Film Festival, a nod to its cinema years, followed the next day by an operatic performance.
Since then, Doshi, the Honorary Director, says the building has attracted audiences who might never have thought of visiting a traditional performance venue. “We do not believe that heritage spaces should be intimidating or exclusive,” he said. Marathi and Gujarati productions have been central to that effort.
Curator Asad Lalljee calls the approach “genre-agnostic.” Rather than limiting the venue to opera or Western classical music, he has programmed Indian classical music, contemporary dance, theatre, literature and visual art. Established and emerging artists share the stage, and partnerships with consulates, festivals and cultural institutions bring in work that would be hard to develop alone.
The venue has presented more than 1,000 programmes in a decade. This anniversary year itself began with Amitav Ghosh on stage (for the fourth time since reopening). January brought three evenings of Western classical music, with baritone Frazan Adil Kotwal, pianist Katya Grineva and the M. Turetsky Choir. In February, the Benny Greb Brass Band brought jazz, and an evening of Motown had audiences dancing in the aisles. The venue also hosted Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anita Anand, for a creative industries roundtable that Lalljee chaired, and the Grammy-winning Tinariwen returned for a second visit.
Indian music has been just as central. Sonam Kalra performed Sufi poetry, Kavita Seth nazms and Shubha Mudgal classical Indian poetry. Aanchal Shrivastava filled the hall with qawwali, and Avanti Patel presented thumri, dadra and ghazal. Literature remains a pillar, with recent evenings including Sarnath Banerjee’s Absolute Jafar, which brought together art, music and storytelling with Imaad Shah and Kiran Rao. To commemorate the 1o years since it reopened, last week saw a celebration that brought together the building’s architectural heritage, contemporary visual storytelling and live music with a performance by Tabla & Sons.
Running a century-old building as a working venue is a constant negotiation. “The Opera House requires ongoing care, and its historic structure also means that any technical or operational intervention must be considered carefully,” Doshi shared, adding, “At the same time, the venue needs to accommodate the expectations of artists, producers and audiences.”
Lalljee is frank about economics. “Its maintenance and operation require resources,” he noted, adding, “but commercial considerations cannot be the only basis for curatorial decisions.” He sees the small auditorium as an asset. It offers an intimacy that suits music, theatre and conversation, though it limits the scale of productions. He treats such constraints as “part of the curatorial process, rather than obstacles to it.”
The impact reaches beyond the auditorium. Lalljee says the Opera House has helped revitalise its neighbourhood and supported the creative economy. “As India’s only surviving opera house, we carry a particular responsibility to preserve this remarkable legacy while ensuring that the building remains a living, breathing space for the arts.”
What is in store
Looking ahead, Doshi wants more collaborations with cultural institutions and international partners, and more younger and diverse audiences. Lalljee talks of interdisciplinary programming at the intersection of art, technology and design, and of deeper partnerships with brands and creators. “The aspiration is to position Mumbai more firmly within global cultural conversations, while remaining rooted in India’s artistic traditions,” said Lalljee.
For Lambah, the building’s second life is its own reward. “Ten years into its re-opening, I feel a sense of both pride and joy,” she shared. The restoration, she adds, shows “that restoration of historic buildings helps save a city’s collective cultural memory.”
Himanshusinhji puts the result more simply. “The Opera House has become part of Mumbai’s present, rather than remaining only a reminder of its past.”
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