Notre-Dame, the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay… The Seine and the emblematic monuments of Paris will be at the center of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, kept secret until the big day, which will combine art and sport in the heart of the City of Lights.
Only about ten people, including the novelist Leïla Slimani, the historian Patrick Boucheron and the screenwriter Fanny Herrero (Ten percent), know the schedule of this 3 hour 45 minute show, which will begin at 7:30 p.m. (Paris time) and aims to “break the rules” by taking place outside a stadium for the first time.
Banks and bridges
An artistic spectacle and a ceremonial Olympic parade will be brought together in the heart of Paris in a single grand opening celebration.
Between 6,000 and 7,000 athletes (out of a total of 10,500), representing the participating nations, will parade on 85 boats on the Seine in the colours of their delegation from the Pont d’Austerlitz to the Eiffel Tower and the Trocadéro, where the grand finale will take place.
Some 3,000 dancers, musicians and actors will take over the banks, bridges and sky, along a six-km route, along which 326,000 spectators are expected.
Around 200 dressers and nearly 300 hairdressers and makeup artists will be stationed in dressing rooms on either side of the Seine.
Nearly 80 giant screens will also be installed on the quays. The show, followed by more than a billion viewers, will contain, according to France Télévisions, video sequences recorded in advance and inserted into the story. There will thus be a “filmed prologue”, Patrick Boucheron told the newspaper The world Tuesday.
“Diversity”
The “greatest show on earth” must be “marvelous, entertaining, spectacular but also meaningful,” its designer Thomas Jolly told AFP.
The route will be made up of twelve scenes that will celebrate the athletes, tell “a story of what France is”, a country of “diversity”, and celebrate “the whole world united”, he says.
The artistic director, surrounded by his team of authors, has constructed a “very generous” story, with “joy, emulation, movement, excitement […] and not only these famous traditional philosophical values that France willingly exhibits, sometimes with too much assurance,” according to Leïla Slimani.
It will be the “opposite of a virile, heroic story,” adds Patrick Boucheron.
“The most beautiful scenery in the world”
“Why build sets when I have the most beautiful in the world?”, likes to say Thomas Jolly, who chose to stage the famous monuments bordering the river.
Among these stars to whom it was “unthinkable not to pay tribute”, according to him: Notre-Dame de Paris which is due to reopen on December 8 after the gigantic fire of 2019.
The artists could storm the outdoor scaffolding still in place, where “rehearsals have been organized”, before two other stops at the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Louvre Museum, according to sources in the cultural world.
At the Musée d’Orsay, two people selected by the Olympic Games’ worldwide partner, Airbnb, will be able to attend the party from the museum’s terrace, before sleeping under the large clock in a temporary room designed by Mathieu Lehanneur, creator of the Olympic torch and cauldron.
Song star
The ceremony’s soundtrack includes creations by musical director Victor Le Masne, mixing pop, symphony orchestra, choirs and electro loops typical of the “French Touch”.
She also draws on “other registers”, according to Thomas Jolly, for whom “France is Jul, Edith Piaf and even Nathalie Dessay”.
On the star side, Aya Nakamura, whose name has been circulating insistently for months, will be dressed in Dior, according to a source close to the matter. According to The chained DuckCeline Dion is also expected if her health allows it.
Other names are circulating, without yet knowing what is fantasy or reality, on the French side – like the pope of disco Cerrone, the singer Yseult, little known to the general public – or on the international pop side, the megastar Dua Lipa.
Recycled materials
Some 3,000 costumes, all unique, were created for the occasion, such as doublets that look like tracksuit jackets or necklines resembling 16th century ruffs, with the aim of using recycled materials, according to Paris 2024 costume director Daphné Bürki, who combined the world of sports clothing with that of historical costumes and gala wear.
Secret rehearsals, last relay runner
Since no complete rehearsal was possible without betraying the surprise, the show had to be rehearsed indoors, in very large hangars, and on nautical bases or rivers.
The name of the last torchbearer to bring the flame to the Tuileries, where the Olympic cauldron will be located, is being kept secret.
Renunciations
“There are paintings that I completely “killed”, for 1,000 reasons: the weather, the fish, the currents, the bridges,” explained Thomas Jolly in mid-June.
For example, he gave up on decorated barges carrying the artists, due to lack of sufficient height under the bridges of Paris.
The same goes for “water ballets”, impossible to implement for “obvious security reasons” or an “inverted Eiffel Tower, for the final cauldron” receiving the Olympic flame.