Miklós Ybl's Magyar Állami Operaház opened on Andrássy út in September 1884 with Ferenc Erkel's Bánk bán, establishing Budapest as a Central European opera capital. The architect modeled the 1,261-seat auditorium after the Vienna State Opera but introduced a more intimate horseshoe plan, placing the imperial box at center-height rather than above the proscenium. Gustav Mahler conducted here between 1888 and 1891, premiering Hungarian works and refining the stagecraft techniques he would later deploy in Vienna. The neo-Renaissance façade carries sixteen statues of composers — Monteverdi to Wagner — carved by Hungarian sculptors trained in Rome and Munich. Inside, Károly Lotz's ceiling fresco depicts the nine muses flanked by Apollo, their figures rendered in burnt sienna and cobalt that catch the light from Ybl's bronze chandeliers. The royal staircase ascends past marble columns quarried in Carrara, each capital gilded with 22-karat leaf applied by hand in the original 1880s workshop. Today the opera house stages nearly two hundred performances annually, anchored by productions of Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, and twentieth-century Hungarian composers including Bartók and Kodály. The resident ballet company performs classical and contemporary repertoire in rotating seasons. Hungarian State Opera House tickets online secure seats across four tiers: orchestra stalls, dress circle, balcony, and upper gallery. Premium orchestra rows center on the conductor's podium, offering unobstructed sightlines to the stage apron. Dress circle boxes retain their original velvet upholstery and brass railings, each fitted with discreet monitors for supertitles in English and Hungarian. The building sustained light damage during the 1944–45 siege but retained its structural and decorative integrity. A 2017–2022 restoration renewed the hydraulic stage machinery, reinforced the fly tower, and cleaned two centuries of soot from Lotz's frescoes using laser ablation. The intervention preserved Ybl's original acoustic design — a shallow dome and horseshoe plan that project unamplified voices to the gallery without electronic reinforcement. Performances run September through June, with a reduced summer schedule during the open-air festival season at Margaret Island.