Walks of BudapestPrivate tours, led by locals

Music

New Year's at the Opera: Beethoven 9

Újév az Operában – Beethoven 9

The Opera greets the new year with Beethoven's Ninth, in Mahler's arrangement, on 1 and 3 January 2027 at 20:00. In October fewer than a hundred seats were left for New Year's Day.

Illustration of Budapest — not a photograph of this event.AI
When
1–3 January 2027
Where
Hungarian State Opera, Budapest
Type
Music
Official site
www.opera.hu

Why it's worth going

The 'Ode to Joy' on New Year's Day, in the opera house Mahler himself ran from 1888 to 1891, is a fine way to start the year, and a calmer one than the night before.

What to expect

An orchestral and choral concert of about two and a half hours, with an interval. Dress is smart rather than formal. Book as soon as you can: New Year seats go fast.

The Hungarian State Opera's New Year concert pairs Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, in Gustav Mahler's arrangement, with the Coriolan Overture and Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1. There are two performances, on 1 January and 3 January 2027, both starting at 20:00 and ending at about 22:35. The choral finale, the 'Ode to Joy', is sung in German, with Hungarian, English and German surtitles. On 21 October the Opera's page showed fewer than a hundred tickets left for 1 January, so the 3 January performance is the easier one to get. If both are gone, Müpa also has a New Year's Day concert: Haydn's The Creation at 19:00.

Build a day around this

Tell us you are coming for New Year's at the Opera: Beethoven 9 and we will build the rest of the day around it — where to be and when, somewhere good to eat nearby, and the parts of Budapest most visitors walk straight past.

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Every so often: new tours, what is on in Budapest around then, and the occasional seasonal offer. Nothing else.

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