Afrigather Boundary-breaking, genre-defying and unprecedented: the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics 2024 acquired the Video games underway with a pulsating vitality and distinctive present that can by no means be forgotten.
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Listed here are 5 memorable moments:
The uninvited rain
Opening ceremony mastermind Thomas Jolly, a famend French theatre director, had rigorously choreographed each minute of the competition alongside the banks of the River Seine.
However there was one issue he couldn’t plan for – the climate. The opening ceremony had the misfortune to happen as heavy summer season downpours descended on Paris at the same time as forecasts confirmed days of sizzling sunny climate forward.
Because the nationwide groups paraded down the Seine on boats, they sought to make the perfect of the state of affairs, doubtless hoping the damp would haven’t any affect on well being earlier than occasions.
Famend French classical pianist Alexandre Kantorow was drenched as he carried out on a Paris bridge with none cowl, whereas social media customers expressed concern for his equally unprotected instrument.
Paradoxically, the piece he performed was “Jeux d’eau” (“Water Sport”) by Maurice Ravel.
A picture of Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the meantime went viral displaying him refusing to put on the usual plastic poncho to remain dry — displaying traditional British defiance within the face of poor climate.
The good comeback
Canadian singer Celine Dion, who had been battling a uncommon sickness, made a spectacular comeback by singing from the Eiffel Tower on the climax of the ceremony with a rousing model of the “Hymn to Love” by Edith Piaf.
Displaying pitch-perfect intonation and hitting the notes with ease, she serenaded a captive Paris because the cauldron lit by France’s most-decorated monitor athlete Marie-Jose Perec and three-time Olympic gold medal-winning judoka Teddy Riner soared into the Paris sky in a balloon.
Final month she vowed she would struggle her manner again from the debilitating uncommon neurological situation that has stored her off stage.
Dion first disclosed in December 2022 that she had been identified with Stiff Particular person Syndrome, an incurable autoimmune dysfunction.
A French traditional
Some 80 artists from the celebrated Moulin Rouge cabaret carried out the long-lasting cancan dance that dates again to the 1820s, in pink costumes specifically designed for the event.
The well-known music nonetheless was given a brand new digital contact that set the tone for a night that sought to place a brand new twist on traditional French tradition.
Because the groups started their parade down the Seine they had been serenaded by an accordion participant – dressed within the compulsory French outfit of beret and blue-striped T-shirt – precariously perched on a bridge.
Defying discrimination
There had been a racist backlash on social media and criticism from the acute proper when it emerged that French Malian singer Aya Nakamura was to carry out on the opening ceremony.
However with President Emmanuel Macron himself backing her involvement, she and her dance troupe swung their manner right into a medley of her hits and a tune by the good Charles Aznavour.
In an eloquent image, she acquired backing from the musicians of France’s Republican Guard and carried out in opposition to the backdrop of the Academie Francaise, the austere guardians of the French language.
A sequence of dancing selling tolerance of sexual and gender identities ended with the actor Philippe Katerine showing because the Greek God Dionysus bare and painted pink, with strategically positioned flowers overlaying his modesty.
In presumably Jolly’s best coup de theatre of the complete ceremony 10 statues of pioneering French girls surged up from the waters of the Seine in a bid to inscribe their achievements in minds eternally.
They included the French author and activist Olympe de Gouges who was guillotined in 1793, Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor who spearheaded the legalisation of abortion in France, and feminist activist Gisele Halimi.
Eclectic music
No-one might accuse the opening ceremony of being inflexible in its alternative of music with the town pulsating to all types from classical, to opera, to pop to electro.
The ceremony didn’t stint on star energy with Woman Gaga showing to carry out a French music corridor traditional and homegrown stars just like the rapper Rim’Okay additionally performing on the ceremony.
However maybe the most important cheer got here for the French metallic band Gojira who appeared on platforms excessive on the Conciergerie, an iconic constructing within the French Revolution, the primary time a metallic band has appeared at an Olympic opening ceremony.
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By Garrin Lambley © Agence France-Presse
