The most famous place, of course, to hear music in Naples is the San Carlo opera house. Lesser-known is the smaller theater in the adjacent Royal Palace, a stage often used by the Neapolitan ballet company. Besides being the home of the opera, San Carlo is the most frequent venue several times a year for large visiting orchestras. The nearby Teatro Mercadante, a charming old theater from the late 1790s—and along with San Carlo one of the official royal theaters of the day—has reopened after many decades of sporadic use.