Human Flower Project

Friday, January 26, 2007

Vienna’s Opera Ball Rolls Downhill

The highlight of the Viennese ball season omits flowers, bowing to a new low.

Blumenball, Vienna—lit up with yellow roses

Photo: Viennese Ball

Whoever scheduled Vienna’s elegant Opera Ball for February 15th should have a fatter bankroll or a head examination.

The tiara has slipped unbecomingly from this the most celebrated dance party of the season. According to news reports today, the Opera Ball’s customary “lavish flower display” will this year be replaced with fake butterflies and “a live horse.”

Organizers complained that “demand for flowers the day after Valentine’s celebrations was so strong they feared there would not be enough to do justice to Austria’s top social event.” Actually, folks, it’s demand BEFORE Valentine’s Day that’s high, and in any case, though the supply of flowers may dwindle in mid-February, how can you have an enchanted evening without them?  “Glittering artificial butterflies” don’t do justice to anything.

Wiser were members of the city’s Society of Municipal Gardeners. Their Blumenball took place January 19th and seems to have had blooms aplenty. Here’s a complete schedule of the ‘06-‘07 balls in Vienna for the gown and cravat crowd.

We’ve learned that Vienna’s balls originally were mandated by the Austrian government, to put a stop to masked parties where the hoi polloi might sneak in and twirl around the dance floor incognito. It appears the Opera Ball has taken a step backward, but without the liberated street-fair fun.

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

                Karl Marx—the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

The “elegance” of Vienna’s old dance galas, a mask for social stratification, returns as its farcical cousin: “glamour.”  Special guest at this year’s Opera Ball will be Paris Hilton, speaking of a live horse.