Bal masqué à l'Opéra (Masked Ball at the Opera)

The murmur of gentlemen in black top hats and tailcoats, and women in masks and splendid costumes. The setting is not the magnificent dance hall of the Opéra, but a discreet 'corridor'.

In fact, this place is no ordinary wholesome ball. It's a secret social venue where upper-class men and the demimonde (courtesans and dancers living in the underworld) mingle, engaging in flirtations and the interplay of desires for a night.

Looking up at the top of the canvas, a woman's leg is depicted casually protruding from a railing. This boldly cropped leg was a blatant symbol that openly stimulated the sexual desires of men at the time. Manet, far from denying such a vulgar and hedonistic subject that painters of his era often avoided, captured it directly on canvas as a raw vortex of 19th-century Parisian desire.

To the right, diagonally opposite the clown Polichinelle, who is cut off at the left edge of the canvas, Manet himself is depicted among his friends. Without a costume, with a golden beard, that slightly melancholic man, though buried in the clamor, is the only one in the painting who looks straight back at us (the viewers).

Hidden beneath the splendid masks are the city's real desires and decadence. Perhaps Manet, from within that crowd, quietly sees through even our 'true faces' as we stand before the painting.