Hungarian Opera Theater

(Magyar Állami Operaház), the largest musical theater in the Hungarian People’s Republic. Located in Budapest. It was founded in Pest in 1837. (Since 1840 it has been called the National Theater.) Operatic and dramatic shows were staged. In 1884 the operatic troupe separated from the theater and moved to a new building; it came to be called the Hungarian Opera Theater. Productions of the first Hungarian national operas—Hunyady László (1844) and Bánk Bán (1861) by Erkel, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1918) by Bartók, and Háry János (1926) and The Spinning Room (1932) by Kodály—and the ballets Scenes From the Csárda by Hubay (1930), The Miraculous Mandarin by Bartók (1954), and others were performed on its stage. The repertoire of the Hungarian Opera Theater includes classic and contemporary operas, including Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky (1902), Khovanshchina by Moussorgsky (1936), and Katerina Iz-mailova by Shostakovich (1965). The theater’s chief conductor since 1960 has been J. Ferencsic. A branch of the theater, the Erkel Theater (the former City Theater), was opened in 1951. The Hungarian Opera Theater toured the USSR in 1958; the ballet troupe, in 1965. The Hungarian Opera Theater has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1959).