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History of the Opera Ball
by Franz Mailer
The earliest balls in the Opera Ball tradition followed in the wake of the legendary festivities of the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815). Though not actually held at the royal and imperial Kärntnertor opera house, these ball festivities were arranged by artists engaged at the theatre. |
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In the 1820s and 1830s, various balls were held at innumerable venues both large and small in the imperial capital on the Danube. However, the organisers wanted a more intimate setting for their festivities, and very soon found an ideal solution in the form of the Redoute Rooms of the Im-perial Palace: despite their magnificence, these rooms offered an conge-nial setting for a ball.
For some time following the inglorious and bloody end to the revolution of 1848, nobody in Vienna felt much like dancing. It was several years be-fore people recovered sufficient joie de vivre to start organising balls in the “Viennese style” again.
It was only in the year 1862 that the famous Theater an der Wien re-ceived “His Imperial Majesty’s permission” to hold ball festivities once more. It was only natural that the event should be modelled on the spec-tacular Paris Opera Ball of the time.
However, when the staff of the imperial and royal opera house finally moved to their magnificent new theatre on the Ring in the year 1869, Emperor Franz Joseph I would not give them permission to hold a ball in his theatre. And so it was that the first ball entitled “Ball at the Royal Op-era” was not even held at the opera house on the ring, but at the Musik-verein, the magnificent new concert hall of the “Society of the Friends of Music”.
It was not until 1877 the that emperor finally consented to a “soirée” be-ing held in his opera house. Although dancing was not officially permitted at these celebrations on the night of 11 December, the following report appeared next day in the “Wiener Fremdenblatt”: "... though things got off to a slow start, Viennese blood and Viennese courage prevailed … and after midnight we saw the first real dancing in the festive hall of our opera house.”
After the downfall of the empire in 1918, the young republic was astonish-ingly quick to revive the imperial festivities at the opera house. The Re-public of Austria’s first “opera redoute” was held on 21 January 1921, and the first so-called “Vienna Opera Ball” took place in January 1935 – and the magic of the name was not lost, even amidst the gloom of the 1930s.
In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, the government of an Aus-tria already annexed by Germany gave orders for the last opera ball to be held.
Following the reinstatement of the Republic of Austria in the year 1945 and the initial lean years in a bombed-out Vienna, November 1955 saw the festive reopening of the opera house after its destruction in the war.
On 9 February 1956 this wonderful opera house was transformed into a magnificent ballroom for the first Opera Ball in the history of the Second Republic.
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