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

has always been topped with a row of statues, but the poor stone the original figures were made of had weakened to such an extent by the 1940s that one of the sculptures fell off its pedestal one night and was almost completely pulverized. Following the accident the other pieces were removed, and for twenty years the cornice remained deprived of its statues. New ones were installed in their place in the 1960s but these, in accordance with the opera’s changed repertoire, included new models. Haydn, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini and Wagner were sculpted into stone again. Pergolesi, Lully, Cherubini, Spontini, et. al., 17—19th-century opera composers whose works are hardly ever performed today, were replaced, however, by likenesses of Glinka, Mussorgsky, Tschaikovsky, Moniuszko

and

Smetana. Sitting in niches on the ground floor to this day are the celebrated Hungarian masters of the age, Ferenc Liszt and Ferenc Erkel.

(At

the time their statues were installed they were both still alive!)

■ Section of the royal itaircase in the Opera Home

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