N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Pest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
The renewed phantom of Miklós Ybl in the Opera
The renewed phantom of Miklós Ybl in the Opera On the basis of the musical about the phantom of the Paris opera, one might assume that an indispensable part of every major opera in the world is a multistorey system of catacombs sunk in the depths of the earth. The Budapest Opera House is certainly an exception. The main reason for this is the fact that subsoil waters are still constantly in motion in this part of the city. Before the reconstruction of the opera, water regularly filled the sink slots beneath the stage; luckily, this did little to disturb the operation of the hydraulic theatre engines. And the oldest opera fans can still recall how water gained from the two wells servicing the hydraulics proved a life-saver for the artists who weathered out the siege of the capital during World War II in the opera when the water mains system of the city was destroyed in the battles. Considering the high subsoil water levels, Miklós Ybl designed the Opera House in such a way that only two of its parts would reach down deep into the soil. One of these was the sink slot mentioned above. At its deepest, this shaft reached twelve metres beneath the stage or seven metres under street level. At the time of its creation between 1875 and 1884, when the entire building was constructed, the original system was the most technologically advanced of its kind in Europe. In a century all this was rendered obsolete. Between 1981 and 1984, the whole building down to the last bit of wiring was reconstructed from basement to rooftop. The trap system rests upon a counter-strip of a thirty-centimetre thick reinforced concrete slab, and the engines stand in a row of six sinking shafts. One single sinking slot weighs six tonnes unloaded. Looking up from below, all one can see is a forest of iron girders, but experts can easily tell what has to be watched out for. Moving parts have a different colour from those fixed in their places. Behind the sinking shafts are storage spaces for the hanging scenery with the electric switchboard system, that soul of the Opera House, resting in a metal case in the main axis of the building. On the side opposite the stage and below the main entrance facing Andrássy út there is the other deepest point of the cellar system. The main air duct here and the two air-ways forking out of it to run the length of the building's side walls once comprised the very heart of the original ventilation system. Air pouring into the duct from the street was humidified with vapour and cooled 21
