In 1745, Malipiero died and she followed Angelo Pompeati, a dancer and choreographer and former Master of the Venetian Ballet to Vienna, where he was working at the court of Empress Maria Theresa, and they were married in St. Stephen's Cathedral.
[13] A contemporary review was:though nominally second woman, [she] had such a masculine and violent manner of singing that few female symptoms were perceptible[14][15]However, in 1759 she was persuaded to return by a man who was then calling himself John Freeman.
[17] In 1760, working through Fermor because she did not yet speak enough English herself, she rented Carlisle House, a large, well-appointed mansion in fashionable Soho Square with outbuildings at the rear along a side street, for £180 a year.
At first her entertainments included only card games and dancing, but she met with sufficient success to buy the leasehold of the house and have a large extension built on the site of the rear buildings and part of the garden, consisting of a concert hall or ballroom above a supper room which seated four hundred at a vast crescent-shaped table.
[13][18] She had a copper plate set into the foundations with the inscription:Not Vain but Grateful In Honour of the Society [of her first subscribers] and my first Protectress Ye Honble Mrs. Elizabeth Chudleigh is Laid the First Stone of this edifice June 19, 1761 by me Teresa Cornelys.
She had to have a new door put in to accommodate the crowds, and attendees included members of the royal family, the Prince of Monaco, the King of Denmark and his entourage and "half the peerage".
"[21] In The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, published in 1771, Tobias Smollett writes of "Mrs. Cornelys' assembly, which for the rooms, the company, the dresses, and decorations, surpasses all description".
Her response to the opening of rival establishments was to redecorate with even greater opulence, including redoing two rooms in Chinese style and having a Chinese bridge built to connect the house and the public rooms behind it, and to advertise in the papers:[T]he alterations and additions to Carlisle House in Soho Square, performing by Messrs. Phillips and Shakespeare, together with all the new embellishments and furniture adding thereto by Mrs. Cornelys, will this year alone, amount to little less than 2000 [£] and that, when finished, it will be, by far, the most magnificent place of public entertainment in Europe.
[27][28] When the throng outside the house on gala nights led to carriage collisions, she instituted London's first one-way system, stating in her advertising that coachmen must draw up with the heads of the horses towards Greek Street.
[18][29] However, she was a terrible businesswoman, spending more on the events and publicity for them than she took in, hardly ever paying employees or tradesmen on time, continuing to borrow, and with such a poor head for business that people stole from her freely.
Operatic performances were illegal without a royal licence;[13][31] Madame Cornelys claimed unsuccessfully that they were charity benefits, as reported by Horace Walpole:To avoid the Act, she pretended to take no money, and had the assurance to advertise that the subscription was to provide coals for the poor.
I concluded she would open a bawdy house next for the interests of the Foundling Hospital, and I am not quite mistaken, for they say one of her maids, gained by Mr. Hobart, affirms that she could not undergo the fatigue of making the beds so often.
In her application she states that:[on arriving in England and discovering] that the most extensive, most opulent, and most important City in Europe was the only one of note that had not a settled Entertainment for the select reception and amusement of the Nobility and Gentry, .
[13][32] Meanwhile, having secured her release from prison, she bought a hotel in Southampton and ran it until it failed; in 1775, back in London, she organised a Venetian regatta on the Thames and then returned to Carlisle House, this time as manager.