Paris Olympics, Macron inaugurates the Games: on the Seine Lady Gaga and Mattarella in ponchos

A France that is a little bit Mona Lisa and a little bit Lady Gaga, living history and passing through life, or rather flowing through it, on the water of the Seine, which as promised took centre stage at a hitherto unprecedented Olympic Games kick-off, with the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, finally declaring open the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The Olympic torch passed through the hands of Zinedine Zidane, Rafael Nadal, Serena William, Carl Lewis and Nadia Comăneci.

The first en plein air ceremony in the history of the five circles opens Paris 2024 with a very long show that alternates between the spectacle and the unprecedented parade on the 85 boats of the 203 countries. Which perhaps somewhat debases the role of the flag-bearers and the interaction between delegations that used to be seen in the stadium: but this is a ceremony of breaking, there is grandeur, but it is one that knows the past and looks to the present and the future.

Which is woman with the homage to ten great heroines, it is love without borders, it is Marianne and Marseillaise, Carmen. It is Sisterhood, one of the 12 artistic pictures that made up the mobile jigsaw puzzle. There is Emmanuel Macron with Brigitte in the tribune set up at the Trocadero, with them more than 100 heads of state, in the rain that has tried to make this start of the Olympics, the third hosted by Paris, cold. A ceremony that started by drawing on a stage gimmick used at the opening of the London Games: not live, but a short film. In 2012, enhanced by the cameo of Queen Elizabeth in Bond girl version, in Paris there is Zidane torchbearer who runs through the streets of the Ville Lumiere, runs over bistro tables, enters the metro, climbs up and leaves the torch to a boy who, with two other children, is rescued from the waters, from the rats, of the underground city by a boat with a mysterious figure, the last torchbearer.

And from there it goes to reality, with the hull bursting onto the Seine and kicking off the parade of the 203 countries, from Pont d'Austerlitz, amidst plays of water and the colours of the French flag. Along the 6 km of the Seine, 12 paintings with as many messages and symbols of French history; the first is "enchantè", the typical greeting of the transalpine people, followed by "synchronicity" and the triptych with which France is identified; "libertè", "egalitè" and "fraternitè", up to the more universal sisterhood, sportsmanship, festivity, obscurity and solemnity, and again eternity and solidarity.

The parade opens with Greece, the first to set sail as Olympic tradition dictates, Afghanistan with three women, two veiled. The bateaux mouches glide down the French river and suddenly the first surprise: the great show by Lady Gaga in a Yves Sain Laurent designer guepiere amidst pom-poms and pink feathers, and she does not sing the most awaited Vie en rose by Edith Piaf, but a great French music hall hit, Mon truc en plumes, by Zizi Jeanmaire. The parade alternates between the passage of boats with athletes and performances along the river, passing through filmed tributes such as the one to the mint that forged the more than five thousand medals.