opening of the theatre by King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía on 11 October 1997. The opera program performed at the reopening was El sombrero de tres picos and La vida breve by Manuel de Falla, which was immediately followed by the world premiere of the opera Divinas Palabras by Antón García Abril –actually commissioned to open the house– with Plácido Domingo in the cast. The remodeling was based on the old classical style of opera house with only basic modernization leaving many seats without a view of the stage. A considerable percentage of seats have a limited or zero view of the stage and a live stream of operas and ballets is projected on the upper side walls of the house so that the entire audience can follow the performance regardless of their view of the stage. The theatre reopened with a floor area of , with a stage of and a maximum capacity, depending on the orchestra pit, of 1,958 seats. Productions The theatre stages around seventeen opera titles and two or three major ballets per annual season, from September to July, both own productions or co-productions with other major opera houses abroad, as well as concerts and recitals. The most popular operas at the Teatro Real have included Verdi's Rigoletto with 387 performances, followed by Aida with 361 and Il trovatore with 342. Two works by Meyerbeer L'Africaine –with 268– and Les Huguenots –with 243– have been shown to draw audiences, although the former work has not been performed since the 1920s, being no longer considered mainstream repertory. Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia has been given some 218 performances since its debut in the house in 1919. World premieres In addition of the world premiere of Divinas Palabras by Antón García Abril, the Teatro Real has staged another sixteen world opera premieres since its reopening: Don Quijote by Cristóbal Halffter (2000), La señorita Cristina by Luis de Pablo (2001), Dulcinea by Mauricio Sotelo (2006), El viaje a Simorgh by José María Sánchez-Verdú (2007), Faust-Bal by Leonardo Balada (2009), La página en blanco by Pilar Jurado (2011), The Perfect American by Philip Glass (2013), Brokeback Mountain by Charles Wuorinen (2014), The Public by Mauricio Sotelo (2015), La ciudad de las mentiras by Elena Mendoza (2017), El Pintor by Juan J. Colomer (2018), Je suis narcissiste by Raquel García-Tomás (2019), Marie by Germán Alonso (2020), Tránsito by Jesús Torres (2021),