Gábor Eszter: Andrássy Avenue – Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

■ The retreshment

room of) the Opera House

The interior of the Opera House is architecturally even more mature and well-balanced than the exterior. Its formal staircase stands comparison with Baroque mansions and even the Paris Opera House. Although its main auditorium is smaller, with its seating capacity of 1,100 it is a spacious hall, which was equipped with the strictest safety designs available when it was built. (Fewer seats were eventually allowed than had originally been planned for.) The auditorium is girdled with three tiers of boxes, which are topped with seats in the gods. (As a safety precaution, a separate stairway leading to the third floor was installed.) Completing the overall artistic design is a fresco on the ceiling above the auditorium. The painting, Károly

Lotz's

chef d’oeuvre, represents Apollo on Olympus, surrounded by the Muses.

The stage equipment represented the most advanced technology of its time. The cast iron hydraulic machinery was in perfect working order until the middle of the 20th century. However, faults that developed could not be fully repaired due to technological changes, and the entire equipment, together with the original, gravitational, system of ventilation, was replaced in the course of

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