Among Vienna’s more notable cultural exports—up there with psychoanalysis, waltzes, and Klimt—is a cake.
The Sacher torte is a decadent affair, spongy on the inside, principally made from chocolate, often served with a dollop of unsweetened schlag. Lore has it that the torte was first whipped up in 1832 at the height of Hapsburg hegemony over Europe for Count Metternich, whose chef invented a cake that was coated and sealed with apricot jam and a hard chocolate shell, which preserved it, allowing it to be shipped great distances without spoiling.
Thus, the Sacher torte became a metonym for the imperial might of the Hapsburgs, spreading to the furthest-flung corners of the empire.
Today, Vienna itself is still a confection much like its torte. Cream-colored buildings are pristine. Klimts and Schieles restored. The Hotel Sacher continues to churn out its eponymous torte like it always has. The savoir faire and silver shops and antiques dealers, all of it preserved as if in apricot jam. Everything has changed, and also nothing has changed.
The memory of imperial glory suffuses every aspect of the city, and yet any trace of aristocracy has been so stamped out of the culture that even the use of the nobiliary particle “von” in family names is illegal. The monarchy was definitively abolished in 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, at which point the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Metternich’s day had weakened into a diffuse collection of ethnic and linguistic groups—Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Czechs, and Hungarians—governed in name only by Vienna.
Descendants of the imperial family still exist, but they remain just Herr and Frau Hapsburg, presumably, so as not to tempt any lingering monarchist fantasies. Austrians are, after all, a conservative people, though it may not always be clear what they are so meticulously conserving.
In 2025, storm clouds are, as is their wont, once again gathering over Europe. The far right’s rumble has crescendoed to a roar across the Continent and beyond. In Austria, the most recent elections, held in January, yielded a plurality for the far-right Freedom Party of Austria. It’s led by the villainously named Herbert Kickl, a demagogue with documented ties to neo-Nazi figures and groups and who was invited to form a government to the consternation of many Austrians.
Nowhere is this tension more keenly on display than during ball season, when the entire polis dusts off its gowns and tailcoats and attends one (or two or three or four … ) of the 450-odd balls that Vienna plays host to in February. It is a fabulously glamorous tradition—begun in the early 19th century as a way to amuse bored aristocrats in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars—but in 2025 it is also a deeply democratic one.
There are balls for every conceivable profession, ilk, class, and proclivity. Are you a barista? There is a coffee-makers’ ball just for you. Do you lift weights? Right this way to the weight lifters’ ball, mein Herr. Do you have AIDS? The Life Ball calls. Are you a chimney sweep? Wipe away the soot—the Ball of the Viennese Chimney Sweeps beckons. Do you enjoy wearing sweatpants? Yes, even you get a ball, though you probably don’t deserve one.
Even the far right, emboldened by fattened electoral margins, has re-appropriated the Academics Ball—held pointedly at the Hofburg palace—as their own. Only in Austria do populists, too, own tailcoats. And yet, not all balls are created equal.
The crown jewel of the season is the Opera Ball. It is the oldest of the balls, dating to 1869, when the Royal Court Opera moved to the Ringstrasse. It is also the most exclusive: about $400 gets you in the door. Boxes go for $25,000.
And as if this particular lily needed any more gilding, this year marks the Straussjahr, the bicentennial of the birth of Johann Strauss II, whose “Blue Danube” is probably the soundtrack that plays in your mind when you imagine a waltz. Approximately 5,000 people attend, and millions more tune in on their televisions across Austria and Germany. Austria is one of the few remaining countries where classical music is still a spectator sport.
The Opera Ball is also the only official state ball, which means it must be opened by the president, who is the head of state, and is typically attended by the chancellor, the head of government, and a smattering of ministers. The problem being that this year there was no chancellor to speak of.
Talks had repeatedly collapsed between Kickl and the conservatives and the Socialists, and no government had been formed. This left the Emperor’s Box in the opera house unusually sparse last Thursday. But no matter, the trumpets blared, President Van der Ballen strode out, tired but beaming in his tailcoat and red sash, and the Austrian national anthem played, followed by the European national anthem.
Then the rows of debutantes, who were mostly—though not strictly—Viennese, descended in white gowns and Swarovski tiaras with their cavaliers for their first waltz in front of the heads of state. They were also observed by soap stars, ministers, TV hosts, and royal pretenders who gathered to mark their entry into society.
After the last bows were taken, a collective sigh was breathed, and suddenly something was different, as it always is, though no one seemed to ever be quite sure what. Girls became women; boys became men. However, on this particular night, as all eyes were on the waltzers, European news outlets announced that Kickl and the far right had been vanquished and a tenuous coalition had been reached between the conservatives and the Socialists.
It was Metternich statecraft at its finest, theater of state becoming opera of state. By midnight, the last quadrille has been danced and elbow gloves and tiaras discarded so the real party could begin. The elderly couples egressed into the night, leaving society’s newest and youngest members to their late-night revelry. Tomorrow, after all, belongs to them.
The writer attended the Opera Ball as a guest of the Hotel Sacher
Harrison Vail is the Communications Director at Air Mail
