Sunday, May 20, 2007
8:00 p.m. — midnight
Sheraton New Orleans Grand Ballroom: 500 Canal Street

Each Phoenix Rising attendee will receive a ticket to our Masquerade Ball, a four-hour costumed event. Attendees are invited to create a costume of their choosing — Is she Spring? Is he a Satyr? Is she Death? — and don a mask to conceal his or her identity. The Masquerade Ball will feature dancing, of course, as well as a quieter space to chat — and perhaps discover the identities of other attendees! Attendees are urged to begin working on their costumes immediately, so as to achieve a suitable level of mystery and intrigue, though neither costumes nor masks are required to attend.

From the public festivals of the Italian Renaissance to the courts of mainland Europe, through the fiction of Edgar Allen Poe to the opera of Guiseppe Verdi, from the assassination of King Gustav to the fantasy balls of today, the masquerade ball has a colorful and varied tradition. The Carnival of Venice, of course, is the most famous, with its traditionally masked revelers cloaking themselves in enigma. The Carnival grew out of religious festivals; in fact, the masques traditionally graced the courtyards of convents until sunset. The masks and costumers were as varied as the masqueraders themselves, including mythological creatures, foreign visitors and animals. The masks were elaborate, and the maskmakers of ancient Venice so revered that the city erected a statue in their honor in 1436.

The tradition of the masquerade spread, and the rest of Europe took up the revelry by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in the elaborate courts of London and Paris, where courtiers frequently donned complicated costumes during the many festivals held by the crown. In Sweden, masques were also popular, though somewhat less so after Jacob Johan Anckarström took advantage of the cloaking of identities to assassinate a costumed King Gustav III.

Many authors, including Eugène Scribe (Gustav III), Guiseppe Verdi (Un Ballo in Maschera), Edgar Allen Poe (“Hop Frog” and The Mask of the Red Death), and Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf), have immortalized the masque.

New Orleans Mardi Gras krewes have adopted the tradition of the masquerade ball in more recent times. Most krewes stage their parade, complete with flambeaux and "throws", and follow it up at some point during the Carnival season with an elaborate masquerade ball for the krewe members and their invited guests. Traditional attire in the parades includes intricate costumes and masks, for no parade member may forego a mask; invitees to the ball sometimes wear costumes, and sometimes formal attire.