Vienna Opera Ball: The most lavish ball night of the year

It’s Opera Ball again. Not just any opera ball in X or Y, but the original in Vienna. Smart gentlemen in tailcoats will once again be spinning their dressed-up ladies on the dance floor at the big “state roller ball”, as the “Kronen-Zeitung”, the powerful central organ for the more robust Viennese insults, likes to call the Opera Ball.

The term “state violence” is quite apt. Of course, the leaders of Austrian politics, represented by Chancellor Karl Nehammer (51) and Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen (80), are there when the command sounds: “Everything waltz!” Under this motto, the Opera Ball opens on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday at 10 p.m. sharp.

The origins of the opera ball

The command “Everything waltz!” is said to go back to the Viennese musician and composer Johann Strauss (1825-1899), who brought the waltz hymn “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” into the world around 1867.

The origins of the Opera Ball go back to the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15, during which old Europe was reorganized after the final defeat of Napoleon. In the evening, the crowned heads of state and their diplomats from the nobility relaxed with a dance.

It is said that the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Monarchy initially viewed the new fashion dance, the waltz, with suspicion. The dynamics of the turns were obviously too ecstatic, and everyone wanted to dance the waltz: rich and poor, powerful and powerless, high and low class. That smelled a lot of “egalité” and revolution.

The ball took place for the first time in 1877 as a court opera soirée at the current location. The patron was Emperor Franz Joseph I (1830-1916), but his majesty did not want there to be dancing because he feared riotous tumults like those at the Paris opera balls.

However, the legendary Johann Strauss conducted the court opera orchestra, and when his brother Eduard (1835-1916) performed an opera soiree polka for the first time, there was no stopping him. The chairs were pushed aside and the couples swayed to the beat of the Strauss music. Since then people have been dancing at the opera ball.

The show of strength behind the Opera Ball

Since 1936, the legendary event has been called the Vienna Opera Ball, a “state roller ball” in which “glamor and shame collide unbridled” and the Vienna State Opera becomes the “perfect stage for self-dramatization” ().

The monumental building in the neo-Renaissance style, one of the most famous opera houses in the world with a daily program, is converted from a theater to a ballroom in 30 hours. 350 skilled workers and 150 assistants remove the seating, lay dance floors, and erect stage boxes and bars. After the event they need another 21 hours to dismantle. A total of 50 companies are carrying out the construction and conversion work, the order volume is 1.5 million euros. This also includes 171 festive floral arrangements and 480 floral arrangements.

Then everything is celebratory and festive for the social highlight of a long, exhausting season of over 450 balls in Austria’s metropolis. Vienna celebrates itself, and the world can watch as the city looks forward to the ball rush.

Actually the whole city? Vienna has around 1.7 million inhabitants. However, only 5,150 ball guests are allowed to attend the opera ball, plus 320 catering staff and 150 musicians. Most of the rest stay in the fresh air (or in front of the TV), but act as if they belong. Vienna has owed this to its haute volée since the time of the Emperor.

Guests have to dig deep into their pockets

If you want to go to the opera ball, you should have a well-filled bank account and supplement your vitamin B, because relationships are also important when it comes to handing out tickets. All places for 2024 are completely sold out; you can apply for 2025 from June 3rd.

The current entry ticket costs 385 euros per person (including a 35 euro donation for the “Austria helps Austria” campaign), but then you still don’t have a place. The cheapest table share high up in the gallery costs 110 euros (per person), which is loud “A little bit away from the general ball action on the 6th floor.”

If you want to be a little closer to the action, you have to pay 440 euros for a table share of two people. A table for four people costs 880 euros, for six 1,320 euros. These are the prices for the infantry. Anyone who is self-respecting rents a box. A table in a simple stage box costs 14,000 euros for six people, a double box costs 24,500 euros, the same as a rank box.

But then you haven’t eaten a bite or taken a sip. A small beer costs 14.40 euros, a glass of wine from 16 euros, sparkling wine is available for 21 euros and for champagne, actually the only adequate drink, you have to pay 39 euros for a glass. . The hot sausages, which in Vienna are not called “Viennese” but rather “Frankfurter”, are cheaper: 16 euros, the goulash soup is available for the same price.

Really “Gschtopfte”, as the better-off people are called in Vienna, can enjoy the five-course Opernball Gala Dinner menu for 425 euros per person in the neighboring Hotel Sacher. Champagne, corresponding wines and mineral water are served.

Anyone who can then roll over to the big state rollercoaster, where film and music stars as well as celebrities from politics, art and business usually do the honors, but also a lot of “Adabeis”, as the Viennese vernacular likes to call the gentlemen who are always there are where the television spotlights illuminate the scene.

These stars are expected

But crowned heads no longer dance in the opera house. Celebrities come from Germany such as the professional joker Oliver Pocher (45), the fashion designer Harald Glööckler (58) or the elderly folk singer Heino (85), who, after the death of his wife Hannelore, was married to the Austrian nobleman Alfie Auersperg was to be among the people again.

At this point, the satirist Karl Kraus (1874-1936) is often quoted, who said about his hometown: “In Vienna, the zeros go before the ones.” It is fitting that years ago Lotte Tobisch-Labotýn (1926-2019), the unforgettable grande dame of Viennese society, described the Opera Ball as a “carnival festival,” which, strictly speaking, it is. It is “sad that there is less and less brilliance on the ball.” No really big names anymore, hardly any old-fashioned salon lions.

Richard Lugner and the Opera Ball

Instead, a former construction lion has become the real star of the opera ball. Richard Lugner (91) once made his fortune as a building contractor, which is why the Viennese vernacular, which can be quite caustic, simply calls him “Mortar”. For many years he has invited world celebrities such as Dita von Teese, Brigitte Nielsen, Sophia Loren, Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson and Brigitte Nielsen to his box. The liar is “a jerk,” the legendary salon lady Tobisch-Labotýn once said. That wasn’t meant in a bad way at all, because “he fits in so well with his guests at a carnival party.”

“Mortar” is now getting old. Now, at 91, he wants to lead this year’s guest Priscilla Presley (78) on a waltz on the dance floor; he has already been practicing diligently. So it goes until five in the morning when the traditional farewell saying “Fine little brother, fine little brother, don’t have to be angry with me” is heard. And “Mortar” endures as long as the tailcoat keeps him upright.