Hungarian State Opera

This guide to the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest opens on the night it opened, September 27th 1884, when Emperor Franz Joseph took his seat in the gilded royal box for the only time in his life. It traces the compromise architect Miklós Ybl made to keep the building from outshining Vienna's own opera house, and the water-powered stage machinery hidden beneath the floor. Empress Elisabeth, barred from that box without her husband, chose her own seat on the second floor instead.