Pandemonium at the Palazzo

Carnevale alia Veneziana

it is wild," saidacool and calm Fran^oise Sagan. All around her young Barberinis, Ruspolis, Torlonias, and Viscontis took to the tabletops and discoed, while Carla Fracci's husband chanted through a microphone: "Jean-Claude Brialy e arrivato! Laura Antonelli e arrivata! Rudolf Nureyev e arrivato!''

The stars shot in from New York, Paris, Rome, and Munich for fashion designer Enrico Coveri's black-and-gold masked ball for four hundred at the fifteenth-century Palazzo PisaniMoretta, on the Grand Canal. It was the highlight of carnival week in Venice, which is fast replacing Rio as the fancy-dress capital of the international set. ''This is the best party I've been to anywhere ever!" proclaimed Germany's most eligible bachelor, Mick Flick (whose multimillions descend from Mercedes-Benz), as Fellini actress Sandra Milo floated by on the shoulders of assorted courtiers

and clowns, and a cardinal smoked a Marlboro. ''I've never been to a ball this beautiful in Venice," said Pierre Cardin, ''and I've been to most of them since the war."

''I studied those balls, especially Charlie Beistegui's," noted Verde Visconti (niece of Luchino), who did the decor "in only twenty-five days"—not counting the Tiepolo ceilings, of course. "The Beistegui ball was so conservative," she added, pointing out the fake cake centerpieces (which were made at Cinecitta) as one flew across the ballroom over the unconservative heads of Prince Egon von Furstenberg, supermodel Janice Dickinson, Karina Sukarno (daughter of the late Indonesian dictator), and Andrea Occhipinti (Bo Derek's co-star in Bolero). Meanwhile, the owner of the palazzo, a Signore Sanmartini, pleaded with the exuberant mob, "Please don'tjump on this floor. It is very old."

Bob Colacello