Lust – Passion – Joy of Life
Revitalizing an 350 years old Tradition
From February 28th to March 2nd, 2025, the Elbe Venetian Carnival will celebrate its fourth edition. Celebrate with us and be there when Dresden revives and reinterprets its almost 350-year-old tradition of the Italian carnival.
The program opens on Friday evening with an Italian family buffet at the Hilton Dresden, which offers an attractive hotel stay package.
The focus of the program is a stroll in Venetian masks and robes through Dresdenβs old town with dance performances on Saturday, March 1st.
After a stylish coffee break together in the βAnnaβ in the Residenzschloss, you can visit in your costumes the historic rooms of the Royal Palace, in which the Saxon court mostly celebrated the Elbe Venetian Carnival.
If you would like to find out more about the baroque festivities and especially about the dances of the time, you should not miss the subsequent lecture in the baroque KΓΌgelgenhaus (in German!).
The day ends with a festive buffet and dancing opportunities in the baroque courtyard of the Hotel Bellevue.
To round off the Elbe Venetian Carnival, the travestie revue theater Carte Blanche will be showing its show βMaskentanzβ on early Sunday afternoon with numerous funny and visually opulent references to the Venetian baroque joie de vivre. All detailed information and registration links in the PDF
In 1553, Moritz of Saxony, the first Saxon elector at the Dresden court, celebrated a carnival. Also present were the Italian musicians he had hired for his cantorey, the forerunner of today’s Dresden State Orchestra, founded in 1549.
Moritz was also the first elector to travel to Venice. For his successors, the grand tour culminating in the carnival in Venice was one of the most important preparations for government office.
In 1677, the first records show that an “Italian carnival” was celebrated at the Dresden court.
In 1695, Augustus the Strong began his reign with a carnival. His festivals are legendary and have an impact far beyond Saxony, especially the Caroussel Comique in 1722, which merged Venetian, French and German festival culture. His idea was to tranform the Saxon residence into a “Venice on the Elbe” with the river als “Saxon Canale Grande”.
Under his successor, Augustus III. The way of celebrating the carnival is becoming more and more similar to the Italian model, not least because of the support of the Italian operas of his court conductor Johann Adolf Hasse.
Even after the end of the Augustan era, echoes of the Italian carnival tradition can be found. In 2022, this will be revived for the first time by Bernd Hoffmann as a link between the Dresden Baroque societies and other actors.