| Set List | Subjects of the Tableaux [inspired by the artistic works of the periods and school. The tableaux was interspersed with dances]:
'Egyptian' (organised by Countess Pappenheim),
'Assyrian' (organised by Vicountess St. Cyres and Mrs Walter Rubens),
'Greek' (organised by Mrs Ralph Peto and Mrs David Beatty),
'Roman' (organised by Mrs Shaw),
'Indian Group' (organised by Mrs Ameer Ali),
'Persian' (organised by Mrs Ameer Ali),
'Chinese' (organised by Mrs Berkeley Levett),
'Japanese' (organised by Mme. Inouye),
'Primitives' (organised by Baroness D'Erlanger),
'Early Italian' (organised by Mrs John Lavery),
'Late Italian' (organised by The Marchesa Imperiali),
'German' (organised by Mrs John Talbot),
'Flemish' (organised by Lady Baring),
'Dutch' (organised by Lady Evelyn James and Lady Speyer),
'Spanish' (organised by The Countess of Portarlington),
'French' (organised by The Duchess of Marlborough),
'English' (organised by The Duchess of Somerset),
'Victorian' (organised by Lady Garvagh),
'Rossetti' (organised by Mrs Rothenstein),
'Futurist' (organised by Sir Earnest Hatch) |
| Royal Presence | HRH Princess Henry of Battenberg,
HM The King of Spain,
HM The Queen of Spain,
HRH Prince Alexander,
HRH Prince Leopold
HRH Prince Maurice of Battenberg,
HRH Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg,
HRH Princess Louise of Battenberg,
HRH Prince Alexander of Teck,
HRH Princess Alexander of Teck |
| Performance Notes | "The Albert Hall - from the outside a suet pudding, on the inside a submerged diving bell - is not an easy place to turn into a temple of beauty; but last night's achievement proved again what can be done by boldness and fine taste. Yellow and orange and purple transformed the place into a fitting ground for the display of the flickering and flashing streams of ever-moving colour in the boxes and on the specially laid and excellent floor. Mr F. Casano's band of 120 players were not in the place usually occupied by the music, but down among the dancers, partly for the dancer's sake, and partly because the space in front of the organ was needed for the tableaux which formed the principal feature of the ball. It was to this platform that all eyes were turned, after the arrival of the Royal parties had set them free. Princess Henry of Battenberg brought as her guests the King and Queen of Spain; and with her came her three sons, Princes Alexander, Leopold, and Maurice of Battenberg, Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Louise of Battenberg, and Prince and Princess Alexander of Teck. The Royal visitors, attended by their suites, occupied the Royal box, and their arrival put the finishing touch to the success of the Picture Hall. Many Ambassadors and their wives and suites were there also; the Italian and the Japanese Ambassadesses were taking prominent parts in the arrangements of the tableaux; and nothing was wanting to make the Picture Ball a brilliant social success.
To do justice to all the tableaux which the Royal and other visitors had come to see would be lengthy and a difficult task. Happy as the idea was, the execution was no less fortunate. It was a wise plan to divide the long series of living pictures into three parts, so that the dancing might go on intermittently; and the raised platform enabled the whole assembly to see the tableaux without the crowding into boxes and galleries and corners that necessitated at previous balls by the processions. The first series of tableaux began just about 11 o'clock; the last was over between 1 and 2; and even the most eager of dancers must have found the time pass quickly, while there were pictures to look at, and the incidental music, carefully chosen to fit each period as it exhibited, to listen to."
(The Times, 4 December 1913. The review continues, describing in detail the performers and tableaux).
"Everything was transformed. Fashion had waved her wand. The hard bare fact of the vast hall was now all in soft colours, purples and golds, and illuminated panels told the names of great painters whose pictures now earn huge sums of money.
On the floor the dancers moved in all the costumes of past years that seemed to them worthy of being remembered. The strange, golden, two-headed figures of Assyria, the angels of the Quattrocento, the djinns from Persian miniatures elbowed Red Indians, Napoleons, Roman Centurions, Futurists, Old English Gentlemen and the ladies of Eugénie.
In the boxes ladies of fashion entertained their friends. The King and Queen of Spain, Princess Henry of Battenberg, and two of her sons entered the Royal box and both national anthems were played. All the three tiers of curtained boxes were full. Above them was a bank of people in ordinary evening clothes, and above them again the arches of the great loggia were crowded.
At the organ end a stage was set making compartments with frames in which the much talked-of and rehearsed living pictures were duly produced and the beauty of the costumes of the wearers further intensified by soft lights. It was a phantasmagoria of colour associations and shapes such as we have never seen before. It was a riot of all the ages. The twentieth century made fun of all that went before.
The pictures, however, were in dead earnest - the nymph whose Pan-pipes shook in the Greek frieze, the fat Indian monarch whose toilet was incomplete when the curtain first went up, wore looks of anguish as though the painter would paint them out again. Great care, great patience, and much skill were shown.
The Egyptian and the Assyrian tableaux were exceptionally good. The Greek frieze, too, was good, and the mimes included the Duchess of Richmond, Mrs. Raymond Asquith, and Miss Muriel Wilson. The Roman showed the conversion of the Emperor Constantine; the Indian was a scene from a seventeenth century miniature. Among the figures were Lady Gort and Princess Pretiva Mander.
Then came the early Italian frescoes, with Lady Randolph Churchill as the Empress Theodora in the Ravenna mosaic. She was not, of course, very like the strange, stirring Empress of the Byzantine mosaic, but her face, charged with experience and zest, did give some of the strangeness of the ancient portrait. Mrs John Lavery was transfigured as Botticelli's "Spring" in her white flowered costume. The next tableau gave no less than four angels, all from the holy Fra Angelico. Mrs. Herbert Asquith was one of them.
Among the Veronese figures were Don Ascanio dei Principi Colonna, a member of the oldest family in Europe, who claim descent from the ancient Roman house. In the small tableau the Marquis Doria Lamba impersonated Bronzino's "Don Giannetto Doria," to which great Genoese house he belongs.
All this naturally held us breathless. The success of the Dutch pictures, indeed the most extraordinary success of the evening, was Hals' "Laughing Cavalier," by Mr. Detmar Blow, the well-known architect. Nature as much as art combined to this masterpiece.
The culmination was the Futurist groups. They were very menacing and decisive. A guest as he went up to supper met one of the figures coming down. He did not go up to supper but went home. To have invented a convention that could do this at a fancy dress ball of all the ages is the best proof of the reality and projectile force of the movement. The Futurists were the triumphant figures of that wild phantasmagoria, wilder even than the real Persian ladies in real harem skirts who tried to dance the tango.
It seems a long way from scenes like these to the invalid kitchens of the East End, but it must be recorded that the profits of the ball will go to that fund."
(The Guardian, 4 December 1913)
The public were admitted to the gallery to view the ball for which tickets cost 5s. |
| Related Archival Material | Illustrations (London Illustrated News) (RAHE/9/1913/3/OS) (RAHE/9/1913/5) (RAHE/9/1913/6) |
| Ticket Prices | 5s (gallery viewing only) - |