For part of its life the Teatro da Rua dos Condes was one of Lisbon's major theatres, attracting the city's elite, including the royal family.

Under the direction of the businessman, Agostinho da Silva, it rapidly attracted opera companies from Italy, with works by Pietro Metastasio and Apostolo Zeno proving very popular with the Portuguese aristocracy and foreign diplomats.

After the 1774 dismissal of the primadonna Annina Zamperini by Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, women were banned from performing on stage in Portugal,[3] a ban which was enforced in the capital of Lisbon until Mariana Albani, Luisa Gerbini and Joaquina Lapinha were engaged at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in 1795,[3] and the actors were therefore exclusively male for those twenty years.

The Portuguese writer, Camilo Castelo Branco, also provided a negative description, describing it as an extremely uncomfortable theatre, partly due to the great temperature variations experienced in different parts of the room, noting "In the middle of the audience, the unfortunate spectator who finds there a place burns with fire; on the sides of the same audience there is a wind that has run through the corridors, which torments all the miserable people who occupy these seats".

In 1837, José Agostinho de Macedo wrote about the "tattered cloth", the "cobwebs" and "the dense and smelly steam of tallow and fish oil from the lamps".

Towards the end of its life it was described by Almeida Lopes as a "miserable shack, stingy and ruined, armed in a skeleton of rotten beams, covered with painted canvas and golden paper, already outdated for the hygiene and comfort needs of the time".

In 1840, management passed into the hands of the very rich Count of Farrobo, whose three-year period of ownership is remembered for the dubious choice of repertoire and for financial extravagances.

In fact, the report may have had an ulterior motive as land was required, and expropriated, for the construction of Lisbon's new Avenida da Liberdade, a large street leading out of the centre of the city in a northwest direction.

The following shows were also not well received but a vaudeville by Sousa Bastos, Nitouche's Wedding, achieved considerable success, bringing strong box office revenues and an increase in popularity for the new theatre.

Unsatisfactory box office receipts saw the original entrepreneur cease to operate within a few months, passing the theatre on to another, who renamed it Cinema Condes.