On the whole I never enjoyed the opera so much as at this theatre." The Pantheon enterprise, however, like most operatic speculations in England, did not pay, and at the end of the first season (1791) the manager had incurred debts to the amount of thirty thousand pounds. In the meanwhile the King's Theatre had been rebuilt, but the proprietor, now that the Opera was established at the Pantheon, found himself unable to obtain a license for dramatic performances, and had to content himself with giving concerts at which the principal singer was the celebrated David. It was proposed that the new Opera house should take the debts of the Pantheon, and with them its operatic license, but the offer was not accepted, and in 1792 the Pantheon was destroyed by fire--in this case the result, clearly, of accident. At last the schism which had divided the musical world was put an end to, and an arrangement was made for opening the King's Theatre in the winter of 1793. There was not time to bring over a new company, but one was formed out of the singers already in London, with Mara at their head and with Kelly for the tenor. [Sidenote: MR. MARA.] Mara was now beginning to decline in voice and in popularity. When she was no longer engaged at the Italian Opera, she sang at concerts and for a short time at Covent Garden, where she appeared as "Polly" in _The Beggars' Opera_. She afterwards sang with the Drury Lane company while they performed at the King's Theatre during the rebuilding of their own house, which had been pulled down to be succeeded by a much larger one. She appeared in an English serious opera, called _Dido_, "in which," says Lord Mount Edgcumbe, "she retained one song of her _Didone_, the brilliant _bravura_, _Son Regina_. It did not greatly succeed, though the music was good and well sung. This is not surprising," he adds, "the serious opera being ill suited to our stage, and our language to recitative. None ever succeeded but Dr. Arne's _Artaxerxes_, which was, at first, supported by some Italian singers, Tenducci being the original Arbaces." It is noticeable that in the aforesaid English _Dido_ Kelly was the tenor, while Mrs. Crouch took the part of first man, which at this time in Italy was always given to a sopranist.