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The Dream Weaver of Venice

February 26, 2026

The Dream Weaver of Venice

Creative extraordinaire Antonia Sautter on Venice’s most magical Carnival show

For one night each Carnival season, a Venetian palazzo transforms into something between a Baroque fever dream and a living opera. Masked figures drift beneath frescoed ceilings. Silk skirts brush candlelit floors. Elaborate centrepieces hover above tables set with hand-embroidered linens. Music swells, acrobats descend, and dancers sweep across a stage framed like a Renaissance painting.

This is Il Ballo del Doge, widely considered the most opulent and imaginative event of the Venetian Carnevale. Founded in the 1990s by Antonia Sautter, the Ballo has evolved from an audacious artistic experiment into an international cultural phenomenon, attracting artists, actors, collectors and aesthetes from across the globe. Each edition unfolds as a new narrative, meticulously staged and entirely handcrafted, where guests are not mere spectators but protagonists inside an ever-shifting tableau vivant.

This year, more than 400 guests, including Anish Kapoor and Emma Thompson, stepped into Sautter’s dreamscape of sacred hearts, Botticellian references and baroque-hippie cupids. The spectacle lasted eight hours. The preparation, of course, lasted all year.

To hear all about it,  we reached out to Sautter herself just days after this year’s Ballo. When we spoke, her voice was still slightly hoarse from the night’s reverie. The exhaustion lingered. But so did the magic.

From a child in costume in Piazza San Marco to the architect of Carnevale’s most iconic evening, Antonia Sautter has transformed fantasy into cultural heritage, one hand-sewn detail at a time.

Your creative universe feels deeply rooted in imagination. How did it begin?

It began in childhood, not as a strategy, not as an ambition, but as something that unfolded naturally, almost like a fairytale revealing itself step by step.

Venice was my theatre. Piazza San Marco was my stage. I fell in love with the city very early on, and I had a mother who was extraordinarily creative: visionary, playful, with golden hands. She understood that Carnevale was not just a festivity; it was a way of learning, of exploring identity.

By the time I was four or five, I was already imagining who I would become the following February. Over the years, I was Marie Antoinette, Mata Hari, queens from different centuries, dancers, even male characters like D’Artagnan. When I wore a costume, I didn’t just dress up. I tried to inhabit that person, to understand their temperament, their era, their psychology.

It was a grand game of transformation, yes. But it was also a journey through history, through geography, through time. Like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, I moved between identities. That freedom – and having a mother who believed imagination was a form of knowledge – shaped everything I am today.

When did you realise Carnevale could become something as ambitious as Il Ballo del Doge?

It happened unexpectedly.

After working in fashion and spending time abroad, I returned to Venice and opened a tiny boutique, a little confetti of a shop. It was a risk. I mortgaged the small apartment my mother had left me to make it happen. Inside, I filled it with corsetry, headpieces, reinterpretations of Venetian tradition,  everything I knew how to create.

One day, Terry Jones of Monty Python walked in. He was working on a BBC cultural programme about the Fourth Crusade and asked for help finding collaborators in Venice. As I began asking questions about the project, something ignited. I didn’t sleep that night. I realised I wanted to create it, not just assist.

I had never worked professionally in theatre or cinema. But I convinced them to trust me. We transformed a palazzo on the Grand Canal into a metaphorical feast. Friends became crusaders. Gondolas were reimagined as ships sailing towards Constantinople. Staircases became fortress walls. The entire city felt complicit in the illusion.

At dawn, when filming ended, the director turned to me and said: “This is the Ballo del Doge.”

That moment changed everything.

Today the Ballo is an international institution. How do you preserve its essence while reinventing it each year?

I am, at heart, an incurable dreamer. So I approach the Ballo as a dream – a shared dream.

Yes, it is technically complex. Yes, it is financially demanding. But I never think of it as a commercial product. I think of it as an opera corale, a collective act of creation for everyone involved, from my contributors – over 50, working with me all-year round – to my guests, who aren’t just spectators but protagonists. Without them, the story does not exist.

Each year the theme changes. This year we began with the birth of Venus: an explosion of love, sacred hearts, cupids and a kind of universal harmony. In a fragile world, I felt the need to start from love.

The day after the Ballo, I gather my team and we begin again. At first, it’s just a black-and-white sketch in my mind. Slowly it acquires colour. It becomes layered. It becomes alive.

“Perfection does not exist. But care exists. And care in every detail, from embroidery to tableware, creates beauty. In the Ballo, nothing is generic. Nothing is accidental.”

Craftsmanship is central to your world. Why is it so non-negotiable?

Because it is the soul of the Ballo.

Nothing essential is outsourced. The costumes, the scenography, the table linens, the printed velvet invitations, everything is created within our atelier. This year alone, we produced more than 200 costumes.

If I were to outsource, I would have to compromise my vision. Instead, we build it from within. There are seamstresses with extraordinary savoir-faire – perfect stitches, impeccable embroidery –  and younger artisans bringing new techniques and ideas. Tradition must be transmitted, but it must also evolve.

Perfection does not exist. But care exists. And care in every detail, from embroidery to tableware, creates beauty. In the Ballo, nothing is generic. Nothing is accidental. 

The Ballo feels immersive: theatre, fashion, gastronomy, technology merging into one. How important is storytelling?

It is everything.

The Ballo is not simply a spectacle; it is a narrative you walk through. There is fatigue behind it, of course. The night before this year’s Ballo, I was sewing until four in the morning. By ten, I was at rehearsals. There are moments of frustration when something does not align exactly with your vision.

But when the doors open and I see the astonishment in my guests’ eyes, everything else disappears. That is the magic.

This year, we invited guests to kiss beneath sacred-heart frames inspired by masterpieces like Hayez and Klimt. Their kisses were photographed and transformed live through artificial intelligence into painterly compositions projected onto giant screens. For those hours, guests were not just attendees: they became art.

Everyone lived inside the story.

With figures such as Anish Kapoor in attendance, how does contemporary art converse with Venetian tradition?

Venice has always been a crossroads. For all of its history, the Serenissima absorbed influences and reinterpreted them. That dialogue between past and present is natural here.

The Ballo creates a space where contemporary vision and centuries-old heritage coexist without conflict. The past is not a museum piece. It is a living language.

Each year we reinterpret it through new forms, new technologies, new sensibilities. That is how tradition remains alive.

And the future?

The Ballo will continue to evolve. Themes will change. Technology will evolve. Colours will shift. But the essence – craftsmanship, beauty, imagination – will remain.

As long as there are artisans willing to create, collaborators willing to build, and guests willing to believe, the dream will continue. For me, it is not about strategy. It is about devotion. Venice does not simply preserve its past. It dreams it forward. And that is what Il Ballo del Doge seeks to do, year after year, mask after mask, stitch after stitch.

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