You're invited to the Masquerade Ball on First Night 2010!
Starting at 3:30 in the UC Ballroom, join the Missoula Folkore Society, Salsa Loca, The Big Sky Mudflaps, The String Orchestra of the Rockies, and the Ed Norton Big Band in a Masked Ball for all ages. You' re welcome to dress up as lavishly or as simply as you want. If you don't have your own mask, you can make one in the UC before you enter the Ball. We don't require a costume, so please come enjoy the music no matter what, and see if you can guess the Mystery Guest during the String Orchestra of the Rockies 25th Anniversary New Year's Eve performance. Then, the Ed Norton Big Band will swing us all into the New Year for the Grand Finale.
Below is some information we dug up around the web about Masquerades, to give you some history, ideas, and inspiration about this fun event! See you there! Happy New Year!
From Wikipedia:
A masquerade ball (or bal masqué) is an event which the participants attend in costume wearing a mask. (A masque is a formal written and sung court pageant.)
Such gatherings, festivities of Carnival, were paralleled from the 15th century by increasingly elaborate allegorical Entries, pageants and triumphal processions celebrating marriages and other dynastic events of late medieval court life. Masquerade balls were extended into costumed public festivities in Italy during the 16th century Renaissance (Italian, maschera). They were generally elaborate dances held for members of the upper classes, and were particularly popular in Venice. They have been associated with the tradition of the Venetian Carnival. With the fall of the Venetian Republic at the end of the 18th century, the use and tradition of masks gradually began to decline, until they disappeared altogether.
Masquerade ball at Château de Hattonchâtel, France.
They became popular throughout mainland Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, sometimes with fatal results. Gustav III of Sweden was assassinated at a masquerade ball by disgruntled nobleman Jacob Johan Anckarström, an event which Eugène Scribe and Daniel Auber turned into the opera Gustave III. The same event was the basis of Giuseppe Verdi's opera A Masked Ball, although the censors in the original production forced him to portray it as a fictional story set in Boston. Most came from countries like Switzerland and Italy.
The "Bal des Ardents" ("Burning Men's Ball") was intended as a Bal des sauvages ("Wild Men's Ball") a costumed ball (morisco). It was in celebration of the marriage of a lady-in-waiting of Charles VI of France's queen in Paris on January 28, 1393. The King and five courtiers dressed as wildmen of the woods (woodwoses), with costumes of flax and pitch. When they came too close to a torch, the dancers caught fire. (This episode may have influenced Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Hop-Frog".) Such costumed dances were a special luxury of the ducal court of Burgundy.
John James Heidegger, a Swiss count, is credited with having introduced the Venetian fashion of a semi-public masquerade ball, to which one might subscribe, to London in the early eighteenth century, with the first being held at Haymarket Opera House. Throughout the century the dances became popular, both in England and Colonial America. Its prominence did not go unchallenged; a significant anti-masquerade movement grew alongside the balls themselves. The anti-masquerade writers (among them such notables as Samuel Richardson) held that the events encouraged immorality and "foreign influence". While they were sometimes able to persuade authorities to their views, enforcement of measures designed to end masquerades was at best desultory.
Masquerade balls were sometimes set as a game among the guests. The masked guests were supposedly dressed so as to be unidentifiable. This would create a type of game to see if a guest could determine each others' identities. This added a humorous effect to many masques and enabled a more enjoyable version of typical balls.
One of the most noted masquerade balls of the 20th century was that held at Palazzo Labia in Venice on 3 September 1951, hosted by Carlos de Beistegui. It was dubbed "the party of the century".
A new resurgence of masquerade balls began in the late 1990s in North America and are still held today, though in modern times the party atmosphere is emphasized and the formal dancing usually less prominent. Less formal "costume parties" may be a descendant of this tradition.
The picturesque quality of the masquerade ball has made it a favorite topic or setting in literature. Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Masque of the Red Death" is based at a masquerade ball in which a central figure turns out to be exactly what he is costumed as. Another ball in Zürich is featured in the novel Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.
"Regency" romance novels, which are typically about Britain's upper class "ton" during the 1800s, often make use of masquerade balls as settings, due both to their popularity at the time and to their endless supply of plot devices.
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From Answers.com
Birthplace of the Masquerade Mask
The Venetian masquerade mask was an established part of this ancient city of canals by 1436, when the city's mask makers became recognized with their own guild. Originally, the carnival of Venice was a yearly celebration of the capture of an invader of this city of canals named Ulrich II. The beginnings of the tradition of wearing the masks as part of the celebration is not clear, though the Catholic church played a part in the eventual wearing of the mask during the festivities.
Carnival
The Carnival festivities included elaborate masquerade balls and grand dinners, entertainment in the grand piazza featuring jugglers, acrobats and traveling exhibits of exotic animals and birds. The masks, gowns and activities reached their height in the eigthteenth century.
Traditional Methods
The Venetian mask maker guild used two methods to make the traditional masks for the carnival. The primary method was the use of papier mache, combined with glue to form the shapes of the masks. This method created the traditional mask-on-the-stick disguise, covering the eyes, that was typically worn by women revelers. More elaborate full-face masks used clay to form the desired shape. After the forms for the masks dried, the artisans applied gilded paint or the traditional white face color and added feathers, glass beads and pearls. Bright oranges, reds, blues and greens were popular, while dark colors were used for the more masculine full-face masks. The wearer could design an original mask.
Masquerade Costume
By the eighteenth century, the costume completely covered the male wearer. A tricorn hat (a three-cornered hat) was worn over a black hood with the mask affixed to the face, and the men costumed their entire bodies with dark cloaks. The women attired themselves in sumptuous gowns and ornamented wigs, customarily wearing masks that covered only the upper part of the face.
Masks and Bad Bad Things
In the eleventh century, the Catholic Church banned the festivities several times, but the influential and wealthy Venetian politicians and clergy convinced the Church to relent with the condition that the participants would wear the masquerade attire only between Christmas and Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. The Venetian Carnival became a hedonistic celebration with an "anything goes" attitude prior to the days of religious abstinence. But from this time on, the wearing of the masks became "more" than a once a year tradition for the powerful in Venetian society. The intrigues of the city politics, signing of important documents and year-round illicit affairs kept the aristocracy wearers of masks unrecognizable to fellow citizens of Venice. Anonymity became the norm rather than the holiday extravaganza of the masquerade of Carnival for the Venetian ruling class.
