At their feet, constantly moving, is the circling crowd, disguised in every imaginable costume, and dominoes of every conceivable hue.

One presents the appearance of a tub, another of a guitar; his neighbor is disguised en botte d'asperges; that one is a mirror, this a fish; there is a bird, here is a time-piece – you can hardly imagine the infinite confusion.

It is impossible to describe this endless madness, this whirl, this bizarrerie, on which the rays of two thousand wax tapers, in their crustal lustres, pour an inundation of mellow light.

"[1]The opera concerns some aspects of the real-life assassination of Gustav III, King of Sweden.

The major aspects of the plot can be found first in Giuseppe Verdi's planned opera, Gustavo III, which was never performed as written, but whose major elements were incorporated into a revised version of the story in the opera which eventually became Un ballo in maschera.