We were there at the Opera Ball in 2010!

This year we were there at the Opera Ball! Brilliant settings, marvelous dresses, clicking champagne glasses and tired celebrities added to the atmosphere of the ball. But we really enjoyed ourselves! We ate delicious bites, danced waltz and cha-cha till dawn on the largest dance floor of the country!

Linda Király, András Csonka, Márk Lakatos, Barbara Orosz, Tünde Kiszel or Andor Schmuck and István Stumpf were also present at the Opera Ball this year. Besides, we bumped into many other famous people, celebrities and media stars too.
Wearing a black tulle skirt evening dress, Barbara Orosz danced the night away while Tünde Kiszel in her princess-like pink dress most of the time just swept the stairs of the Opera house. However, when less people occupied the dance floor at dawn, she also dared to go on the floor in her huge dress and danced for some songs played by the Old Boys band.
One of our favorites was István Stumpf political scientist, who, putting down his serious face for one night, asked prettier and prettier ladies for a dance, one after the other. Even from the third floor, we could catch a sight of him how virtuoso he treaded the dance floor.

The decoration of the Opera house was as beautiful as the previous years. The flower-balls hanging down from the ceiling, the pleasant, silky lights, the frescos on the ceiling of the original auditorium and the beauteous chandelier all transmitted elegance and magnificence. Mary Jennings, an American guest at the ball told us that from the three balls that she and her husband visited so far in central Europe, the most splendid was the Budapest one. Regarding the splendor of the ball venue, we have beaten the Viennese and the Paraguayan balls but is this true for other features as well?

For the last 15 years they have been organizing an Opera ball in the Opera house. Fortunately, the types of the guests have changed during the years, today people are more elegant and fewer scandals happen considering the look or the behavior of the guests. However, we saw ladies in knee-long or ankle-long evening dresses this year too. We even saw ladies with a dress décolletage that covered nearly nothing but our male colleagues had partial opinion in this question, declaring those might not have been too much. “Are there any kinds of décolletage showing too much?”

Black and white or last year’s pastel shades; grey, silver and butter-coloured are also trendy – declared Anita Benes about the evening dress fashion. It seems that a number of people had taken the advice of the fashion-expert; we met some black evening dresses at the ball. What is more, the celebrities also paid attention, Linda Király and Barbara Orosz appeared in a decorative black dress too. However, we have to add that we bumped into a guest who seemed as if she were wearing her home night gown for the special night – and she was not a cleaning lady due to the fact that they always wear costumes borrowed from the Opera house and they discreetly fade into the crowd!

Let’s speak about the program of the evening now! José Cura and Ildikó Komlósi gave outstanding performances – just as we expected. A little girl was the partner of Cura at his second Spanish song but she was only there for the looks, she did not sing anything. He held her in his arms and he walked around, then gave her a microphone and then took it away from her. Nobody knows the function of it… Anyway, after the song, as he was talking with Nóra Korcsmáros and István Szellõ, the two presenters of the night, it turned out that the name of the little girl was Jasmine, just as the name of Cura’s daughter. He was really pleased because of this.

After this, the two star guests sang a duet from the Franz Lehár operetta, The Merry Widow and then they stood in the middle of the dance floor and began to dance the opening waltz of the evening. José Cura on the press conference preceding the ball told the journalists that he is really afraid of the waltz, because he cannot dance properly. We have to comment on this: watching him from the third floor he looked really charming with Ms Komlósi and seemed like an experienced dancer. It is a pity but later at night we could not see Cura on the dance floor, it might have been because of his lack of dancing-knowledge. Not as we saw Ildikó Komlósi who amongst her friends surmounted the floor for hours with a real Hungarian virtuosity! Congratulations for Ms Komlósi, she has proved her qualities not only on the stage but on the dance floor as well!

The orchestra of the Opera house and the bands invited for the ball played high-standard music. Everybody could find the music that fitted oneself: the orchestra played waltzes and polka in the great dance hall till midnight while in the aula and in the Zwack café jazz and dance music were played. After midnight, the Ungar dance band and the Old Boys band played cha-cha, samba and rock’n’roll and sometimes we could recognize tango and quick step too.

After a long discussion, we picked the best dancers of the night. Unfortunately, the pair was American, not Hungarian. Mary Jennings and her partner told us that they only travelled through the continents till Budapest, to participate in the Budapest Opera Ball. They are going home on Thursday. “We really enjoy the night! Every year, we pick a famous Opera Ball in Europe and visit the city. We have already been to Prague and Vienna but I have to say, this ball is the most beautiful of any! My husband and I love to dance, we love the atmosphere of the balls and we might come back to the Budapest Opera Ball once again, who knows!” We hope that we will see this nice couple once more and we expect in the future that one year the best dancers of the Opera ball will be Hungarians.

The Budapest Opera Ball will be held next year as well. Why should You come? Because You can meet and dance with beauty queens – besides the Hungarian beauties this year, we met the Polish and the Estonian beauty queens as well –, You can eat delicious meals, drink the cocktails of the star bartender András Lajsz, You can dance and listen to really high-standard music and last but not least You can be in one photograph with the Hungarian celeb Tünde Kiszel or the star guest Ildikó Komlósi!