Hungarian State Opera House is considered to be amongst the finest opera houses in the world. The auditorium holds 1,261 people. It is horseshoe-shaped and – according to measurements done in the 1970s by a group of international engineers – has the third best acoustics in Europe after La Scala in Milan and the Palais Garnier in Paris. Although many opera houses have been built since, the Budapest Opera House is still among the best in terms of the acoustics. In front of the building are statues of Ferenc Erkel and Franz Liszt. Liszt is the best known Hungarian composer. Erkel composed the Hungarian
The Royal Opera directors since its inception: Karl Rankl, Rafael Kubelík, Georg Solti, Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink and Antonio Pappano. From the mid-19th century, opera had been presented on the site of Covent Garden's Royal Opera House, at first by Michael Costa's Royal Italian Opera company. After a fire, the new building opened in 1858 with The Royal English Opera company, which moved there from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. From the 1860s until the Second World War, various syndicates or individual impresarios presented short seasons of opera at the Royal Opera House (so named in 1892), sung in the original language, with