We rode to the theatre in simple but pleasing style on the canary-yellow metro, emerging up a plain flight of steps into light drizzle. And there across the road was the Opera, built 1873-84, with its exterior balconies, arches and statues.
The guidebook spoke of the facade's "quiet classical graciousness"; it seemed rather to boast wealth and power, the kind of place that explains why revolutions happen. Inside, Budapest's new bourgeoisie had put on their best frocks.
We were showed, past mirrors and pillars, to box A6 in the first tier, and there, shamelessly, we took photographs of each other. We'll never afford seats like this at Covent Garden, which is one of the slightly guilty joys of eastern Europe: you can afford to do things you cannot do at home. You may, however, end up spending a fortune on tablecloths, more of which later.
We gazed about. Lots of red and gold, but white floorboards rather than carpet in the stalls; three tiers of boxes separated by gilded heads of warriors with helmets; then a gallery with panels bearing the names of great operas: Fidelio, Tannhauser, Don Juan; a great circular fresco on the ceiling, with heroic gods and cherubs frolicking in a classical kind of way.
The performance ought to have been something grand like Gotterdammerung or Aida. Instead, it was a Bartok double bill: an opera about a serial lover and killer, and a pantomime ballet about a prostitute and a dodgy customer. All a bit low-life for these grand surroundings.
Disbelief had to be suspended in spades in Duke Bluebeard's Castle, especially when the duke's latest lover, Judith, hit the stage in a turquoise tent. The whole thing was a bit short of erotic charge. But the heroine of The Miraculous Mandarin, a long-legged dancer in a scarlet shift, smouldered through some of the nastiest and most dramatic music Bartok wrote.
To recover our composure, we strolled through the night back to our hotel and kept stumbling across snogging couples. They seemed to be at it the whole time we were there. Perhaps love is in their air during the city's spring music festival.
Bartok's music certainly was in the air, which you would expect in the capital city of the land of his birth. On another night,we heard the Bartok Quartet (whose second violin is a dead ringer for Terry Wogan) play his first, second and fifth quartets, which is just about as tough an evening as music can offer.
I've been trying to bang these works into my head for years. The first quartet is almost a century old but still makes my brain hurt; the second has echoes of the vicious chase from The Miraculous Mandarin; the fifth has an arresting passage where bows are repeatedly bounced on strings.
Performances from the Bartok Quartet were both authoritative and idiomatic.
The concert ought to have been in some modernist masterpiece of glass and steel; instead it was in the ceremonial hall of the Academy of Sciences where the seats are rock hard and the neo-gothic decoration runs riot. But the clash between visuals (huge chandeliers, man with lyre, bewinged maiden in nightie) and sound (fierce, uncompromising) added to the intellectual challenge. The interval drink options were austere: water or fruit juice.
Next day, we visited the museum of music history in one of the quiet lanes up on Varhegy (Castle Hill). There was a fine collection of cimbaloms (the folk instrument like a hammer dulcimer used by Kodaly in his Hary Janos suite), square pianos, Stradivarius violins, folk double basses (to be played sideways while sitting; very tricky by the look of the pictures), fat bagpipes like dead sheep and a flute with a whip on the end. We were shadowed throughout by a smiling custodian but that was less disconcerting than the silence: what did all those instruments sound like?
That night, it was Haydn's The Seasons, played by the ensemble known by the snappy title of the New Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, which seems to use a curious mix of authentic and modern instruments.
The performance was in the hall of the Liszt Academy of Music, which is art nouveau with knobs on. A bit tired and tatty now, but magnificently distracting. On corner columns, cherubs play flutes, triangles, drums and trumpets. The side balconies are supported by pairs of near naked, big-breasted women with dangling aprons, and a long-necked swan decorates the huge organ.
The audience applauded warmly, doing something we had dubbed the accelerando ungarese , a slow handclap that speeds to a lusty appreciative climax.
But it wasn't all music. We strolled, nearly bought a toy rabbit, gazed at the spiky parliamentary palace from the Fisherman's Bastion near the Matyas church (whose decorated interior might be mistaken for a showroom of Liberty prints), took a trip to the Danube Bend and failed to sample one of the city's famous baths.
We also bought a white linen tablecloth in the huge market hall at the end of the pedestrianised Vaci utca. It seemed a real bargain till we realised that, owing to a currency conversion miscalculation, we had paid four times more for it than we thought. But it was hand made with decoration as complex as any Bartok quartet.
Five best restaurants
1 Matyas Pince Marcius 15 ter In the cellar, you will be serenaded by a violinist and cimbalom player while waiters in national costume bring plateloads of traditional fare on long wooden trays supported on their shoulders. Try the goulash soup and a hefty main course, and you won't need to eat for another 24 hours. Reasonable prices.
2 Ruszwurm patisseri Szentharomsag utca A tiny café and cake shop, dating from the 1820s. The hats of the Hungarian ladies resemble the sticky delights they eat. Irresistible.
3 La Fontaine Merleg utca A Hungarian version of a French brasserie not far from the famous chain bridge across the Danube. Quiet, candle-lit, atmospheric but utterly unpretentious. And good value.
4 Gambrinus Váci utca Modern interpretations of classic Hungarian and international food. Gypsy trio. Expensive.
5 Gundel Allatkerti utca Hungary's most famous restaurant. Art-nouveau decor. Seriously expensive.
The practicals
St Albans Travel Service (01727 866533, www.theatrebreaks.com/hungary/opera) has two nights' B&B at the four-star Astoria Hotel and box seats at the opera for £139ppplus return scheduled flights with Malev Airlines for £184pp. Bluebeard's Castle will be on again on June 18 and The Miraculous Mandarin on June 23. Next year's Spring Festival will be held in the last two weeks of March. St Albans and Travel for the Arts (020 7483 4466, www.travelforthearts.co.ukwill be organising packages.
