One of them was Carmen Bracho, 30, an engineer in Toronto who planned an entire trip to Vienna with her boyfriend for the Philharmonic Ball this January.
“I started seeing it come up more on my socials,” Bracho says. “What captured my attention was that fairy-tale aesthetic and all the traditions, like the waltzing, the live music, the performances from the debutantes. In North America, we don’t have long-lasting traditions like that.”
Bracho says the price for the ball was comparable to a concert ticket, but instead of a couple of hours of live music, she had eight, from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. “In Toronto, there’s nowhere to go where you can dance all night,” she says.
One of the highlights, she says, was the quadrille. During Viennese balls, when the clock nears midnight, suddenly and as if on a cue, hundreds of people form two long lines in the ballroom. While the emcee gives instructions, the room descends into chaos as groups of strangers try to follow the steps to a dance set to Johann Strauss II’s “Fledermaus” at an increasing pace. Toward the end, people grab partners and race around the ballroom in a gallop through a tunnel of arms, an exhilarating experience—especially in heels—that leaves the heart pumping and the quads sore for days. Consider it community building, 19th-century-style.
“I was surprised they still do things like this, and everyone kind of knows what’s happening,” Bracho says. “I absolutely loved it. I was very lost, but it was so fun.”
Over the centuries, the biggest draws of Viennese balls have remained consistent: live performances of classical music by some of the world’s premier musicians and the opportunity to waltz in beautiful clothes in spaces where entry is usually restricted, like the grand halls of the Habsburg imperial palace, Vienna’s Neo-Gothic City Hall, and the State Opera.
But many of the balls have adapted to the times, adding rooms with live bands and DJs, lounges serving aperitivi, and sometimes even karaoke.
The most famous of the balls is the Opera Ball, which closes the season and has been attended by guests like Kim Kardashian, Jane Fonda, and Goldie Hawn. The guest list is high-profile enough that the street in front of the building, a main artery in the city, is cordoned off for the entire evening, disrupting tram service, and dozens of police officers are stationed outside. Activists, some calling for higher taxes on the rich, have gathered in large and small groups outside the Opera Ball for decades.
For this year’s Opera Ball, held on February 12, around 600 pairs applied to dance in the opening—triple the number of applicants than in 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic. Like many other balls, the Opera Ball opens with a waltz performed by 160 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young couples, who are referred to as debutantes.
Entry tickets for the Opera Ball start at 410 euros, or about $487, and go as high as around $30,000 for a tiered box, and official partners include Swarovski and Lancôme. Giorgio Armani designed this year’s costumes for the professional ballet dancers before he died in September.
