08/01/2026
DALÍ’S BUBBLES, BALLET & A ROTTING BEEF CARCASS
In April 1961, Salvador Dalí gathered the multitudes to promote an upcoming combination opera and ballet production that would premiere at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.
Dalí had been commissioned to produce five watercolor drawings that would be transformed into enormous 30' x 30' stage sets, along with four costumes for the performers.
But, of course, Dalí being Dalí, that wasn’t nearly enough.
He concocted a plan in which dancers would dip large wire cubes into vats of soapy water and pull them out covered with enormous soap-bubble membranes. Dalí envisioned filling the bubbles with smoke while constantly changing colored lights played across their surfaces.
“Nothing like it will have been seen in the history of the world,” Dalí proclaimed.
Unfortunately, nothing like it was seen that day either.
When Dalí demonstrated his invention for the gathered crowd, nothing happened. All anyone saw was a pile of soapy water.
Dalí immediately found the culprit: America!
“Bah! That is American over-technicalization for you,” he complained, claiming that bubbles he had tested in France lasted for a month.
Fortunately, Dalí didn’t give up.
When the production finally opened in Venice in August 1961, the French perfume maker Maison Guerlain had developed a bubble solution that actually worked. Not content with simply producing bubbles, Dalí had Guerlain create a special scent called “Nébuleuse” for them and spray the theater with its famous Vol de Nuit perfume.
It was reportedly the first theatrical performance to use scent as a major element of the production design.
Brilliant and creative?
Well…maybe.
A more practical explanation is that something was needed to cover up the smell of the rotting beef carcass hanging on Dalí’s stage!
The production consisted of the opera La Dame Espagnole et le Chevalier Romain and a ballet created by Dalí and Maurice Béjart, appropriately titled Gala. The famous ballerina Ludmila Tcherina (“La Tcherina”) was the prima ballerina, surrounded by an all-star cast of musicians, composers and writers.
And then there was Dalí.
Onstage, a blind man watched television, a wardrobe mistress constantly ironed, the beef carcass hung surrounded by flies, a limp watch was passed around, and a procession of limping beggars and gondoliers appeared before Dalí’s famous paintings.
Finally, the Master himself made his entrance dressed in a gondolier’s gleaming white uniform and red barretina.
Dalí had originally announced that he would enter Venice riding a whale.
He didn’t.
But he certainly made a whale of an impact.
After Venice, the production traveled to Brussels and then Paris—without Dalí. Things didn’t get much calmer. During the applause following opening night, Ludmila Tcherina suffered cardiac arrest and was rushed to the hospital. Remarkably, she recovered and returned to perform on subsequent nights. Newspapers even speculated whether the whole episode had been real or part of the show.
By the time the production reached Paris, at least one practical improvement had been made: the real rotting beef carcass was replaced with a stage prop.
It was cheaper, more practical—and it didn’t stink to high heaven.
The whole production was one big Dalí circus.
God, I wish I had been there.
