ABSTRACT
The artist's vision oscillates between that of a participant in the scene and that of an observer of it. Edouard Manet's self-conscious awareness and deliberate articulation of both his own Parisian modernity and a contemporary problematic of eroticism is manifested in the picture's construction. The theme of the Ball at the Opera can be related to a variety of Manet's preferred subjects, especially to his many representations of women of the theater and the demimonde, the courtesan, or the prostitute, sometimes with a male admirer present or suggested, as in Olympia or, later, Nana. Although the painting is usually referred to as Masked Ball at the Opera, only the women are actually masked and wearing fancy dress; the men wear ordinary evening clothes. Manet may have included a self-portrait in the blond-bearded figure, second from the right, immediately above the little dance card bearing his signature.
