Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

poser who had been appointed piano and harp instructor to the daughters of Archduke Albrecht in 1951, of a three-act opera called Erzsébet (Elizabeth) on the occasion of Francis Joseph and his wife Elizabeth visiting Hungary in 1857. The libretto of Bánk Bán was written by Béni Egressy. Governor Petur's famous drinking song had been written, to a poem by Vörösmarty, by 1844. Liszt thought very highly of this particular piece, in which he believed Erkel to have raised the music of Hungary to a European standard. Close co-operation between the two composers looked back on a fairly long history. Liszt's Mina Esztergom was conducted by Erkel in 1856, who became Liszt’s "right-hand man'1 in the capacity of director and piano-instructor of Hungary’s Academy of Music when, in 1875, it began to function under the presidency of the older master. In the meantime, he composed the operas Sarolta (1862), Dózsa György (1867) and György Brankovics (1874). István király (King Stephen) was not, however, completed by the time the Opera House was opened; its hugely successful premiere had to wait for another year until 1885. Erkel lived to see his own statue erected on one side of the Opera’s main entrance, with the figure of Liszt set up on the other. The work of Alajos Stróbl shows the master as an aging man worn out by the cares of a long life, wearing traditional Hungarian costume, and slightly leaning forth towards the passers-by. Three years after his death, Három pipa utca was renamed in honour of the composer. The plaque placed in i960 on the wall facing Erkel utca of the building at 17 Üllői út, District IX, was designed by Jelena Veszely.

The Father of Architectural Preservation

Next to the Hotel Hilton and opposite the side of the former Hedgehog Inn is a corner-house whose wall bears, at eye level, the bronze-framed portrait of a man. The portrait was mounted here in 1972, in memory of the centenary of the founding of the temporary National Committee for Historic Monuments. This • was done by its successor, the National Monument Protection Authority.

Placed on the Ibolya utca front of the house once owned by the Magistrate of Buda, the portrait was made by the sculptor Erzsébet Schaár in the likeness of the archaeologist, art and architectural historian, Imre Henszlmann.

Trained in Pest, Vienna and Italy, Henszlmann graduated with a medical degree from the University of Padova after studies in Pest and Vienna, and yet

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