Máté Mesterházi earned his degree at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in 1984 and won a scholarship to spend the following season at Berlin's Komische Oper. Between 1992 and 1994, he studied cultural management at Vienna's Hochshule für Musik. He has written numerous articles, essays and critical pieces on music history and highly varied aspects of opera performance for dailies (Népszabadság, Népszava), weeklies (Life and Literature) and monthly journals (Music, Theatre, Opernwelt), as well as for other periodicals (Operamagazin), and Hungarian Radio (New Music News, The Musical Piece of the Week and Operatheque); in addition, he has also been involved in dramaturgical work, opera translations and writing and editing programme booklets (for the Hungarian State Opera and Budapest Spring Festival).
He was decorated with the Kálmán Nádasdy Award in 2010.