The Czech periodical Lumír 5/2/1857 reported that on the Tuesday before Lent there would take place in the Estates Theatre a masked ball. No further details were given by the source. A brief, unsigned review of the event was then published by Lumír 26/2/1857. This related that the event was sadly quite unexceptional. Although there was a ‘quite numerous’ attendance, ‘the masks [costumes] were fewer than in previous years, and in some of these wit and reason seem to have been forgotten. It is to be wondered, that in Prague the merriment and real character of masked balls is somehow incapable of being developed.’