The night of a hundred flags that will unite the world

Here it is on Marco Balich's desk, the list of the hundred countries that will parade at the San Siro stadium on 6 February in the opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina Games, from Greece, which gave them a modern rebirth, to Italy, which is hosting them: "In between there are also Benin and Guinea-Bissau, Vanuatu and the US Virgin Islands, and who knows the minimal differences between their flags? A ceremony is also an interesting lesson in geography, we can't gloss over the details,' smiles the creative director of the event, looking for support on the back of his armchair in these hectic days. A dark jacket and polo shirt, Balich, 63 years old, Compasso d'Oro in his trophy cabinet, cultivates the path of lightness: "Yesterday, I was moved by the rehearsals that took place for months in a compound near the stadium and, fortunately, a few days ago - usually two months - we entered the San Siro. Everything is so close and electrifying with Italy at the centre of the world and with our eyes on the future'.

In the Milan headquarters of the Balich Wonder Studio, near the Tombon de San Marco, the large spaces are empty, large desks, PCs everywhere, a poster of the Universal Judgement and a giant David, and a great silence reigns. Almost all of the company's 280 employees are busy at San Siro or Cortina: "We are just a little while away and we are assembling the pieces of this journey of the imagination made possible thanks to a group of creative young people and 3,000 volunteers. It will be a unique and widespread ceremony as the Games are. Just imagine the complexity of duplicating everything, both in Milan and Cortina - show, athletes' parade, flag-raising, lighting of the brazier created with Leonardo's Nodes in mind - and doing it all at the same time'. Starting at 8.00 p.m. on 6 February, do not make any commitments, on the other hand, some 2.2 billion television viewers are expected (the Super Bowl final has 125 million), for an event that has also seen Simone Ferrari, creative director and deputy creative lead, Damiano Michieletto, creative director, Lida Castelli, protocol creative director, Lulu Helbaek, creative director, Paolo Fantin, production designer, Andrea Farri, music director, Massimo Cantini Parrini, costume designer, working with Balich. It will be something like the biggest show since the Big Bang, and the world star of live events, who is also playing at home, cannot be asked for anything less than something epochal: Balich has 16 Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies behind him, from Turin 2006 to Tokyo 2020, with those brides who danced twenty years ago to Bocelli's voice: 'We did not know how to liven up that part, we came up with the idea of the brides, but the budget was small, 30 euro for each of the 400 brides. How to do it? Our costume designers set off and requisitioned 500 dresses from all the shops in Puglia, Calabria and Basilicata and adapted them to become white magic'. Here, a ceremony is intuition, inventiveness, sense and practicality: 'Milan and Cortina are two such different realities, city and mountain, plain and peaks, man and nature, and they dialogue with each other in search of harmony. Man cannot prevail over nature, nor vice versa. From their exchange, from their looking at each other and integrating, harmony is born, the red thread of the ceremony. Our narrative is not a recipe for the future, but we support this dialogue: Italy, a small country, throughout its history and even today, demonstrates that sea, mountains, industry, craftsmanship, beauty come together in the complexity that is always a new and magnificent sound'.

The Games are a 4 billion effort of the entire country-system. Even the ceremony, with the presence of Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, Laura Pausini and Sabrina Impacciatore, among others, plays its part in recounting the Dolomites and the Duomo, design and music, and in giving a vision of 15-20 years: 'Try asking who was president in 2006, no one remembers, while who doesn't remember the inauguration of Turin 2006? The Games mark our lives. They mark time like the circles of trees, but woe betide us if we indulge in nostalgia: 'We have chosen to tell the story of a young and modern Italy, open to the future, without wallowing in the 16th century or the Dolce Vita'. And the creativity of the BalichWonderStudio is recognised worldwide: the company, with a turnover of 315 million in 2022 (then 51% was sold to the Banijay group, which does not split the revenues of its divisions), has five locations (in addition to Milan, Paris, New York, Riyadh and Dubai) and organises sporting ceremonies, but not only, huge shows, installations and follows the big luxury brands. 'We behave,' explains the creative director, with a flamboyant soul, 'like a racing team and try to participate in the most important events, which are not always the most expensive. And nothing compares to the Games for audience, media impact, image return. Doing an Olympic ceremony is like a journalist winning the Pulitzer, it is the certificate of reliability that surpasses all other awards. And to maintain uniqueness you have to mix and integrate technology and concreteness,' and as he explains he points to the presence on the sofa behind us of a luminaria from Salento. The detail that you don't expect and that makes you wonder.

What Italy is like, what this ceremony will be like, and Balich's eyes, which have the vividness of a child, continue: 'Until twenty years ago, the world of events was dominated by the Anglo-Saxons, today completely disappeared. The all-Italian recipe that we have launched together with my partners Gianmaria Serra and Simone Merico is a mixture of technology and emotion, you have to make the heart beat faster and bring down a few tears of emotion, staying away from cynicism. Devising a ceremony is a long process of study, dialogue, organisation: there is no such thing as a one man band'. Rio 2016 cost 70 million, Sochi 2014 twice that amount. 'These are important figures, it is true, but with a fighter jet you can organise four ceremonies and the return is quite different: our pride is to touch the hearts of the youngest people in particular, to make them feel part of a community, of a value chain, of an identity that in Italy is made up of beauty, culture and know-how'. And, while Balich is speaking, Andrea Farri, 43 years old, with a shaggy hair, more than a hundred film and TV series soundtracks, a sort of new Morricone, and musical director of the event, enters the studio: 'In the preparatory meetings we thought above all about how to speak to young people, how to tell them about the values of Italy through music that is Raffaella Carrà, Puccini, Rossini and also the songs of the mondine and popular music. We chose the binary of irony and emotion'. The famous tear-jerker effect.

There are also very political aspects to a ceremony: 'I'm curious to see the reaction of the audience when the delegation from Venezuela or Denmark enters, but beyond that, it will be a show shot through with a great need for peace. The world around us speaks everywhere of war, prevarication, abuse. We want to celebrate sport to show how democratic it is, how it knows how to welcome everyone and make them compete within the rules. When I was a boy, my parents, who had lived through the war, told me about the horrors of that time: here we want to exalt respect, sustainability and anti-racism'. Without forgetting that big events are often a fig leaf behind which countries that are not exactly champions of democracy and freedom hide: 'We happened to organise the Asian Games ceremonies in Turkmenistan in 2017. The capital Ashgabat is a city lined with white marble and LED screens where only images of the then president were projected, a dictator who had himself portrayed in gold statues and opened museums dedicated to dogs and horses, his passions. It makes sense to work even in these contexts, as we did in Sochi, because we sow the seeds to create contamination, different thoughts, values they do not know, joy and hope in the new generations. It is the beginning of a virtuous path, the crack in the wall that brings curiosity and knowledge. In 2008, when Beijing hosted the Games, it opened up to the web for the first time and now it is a country that lives on social media'. So, blessed are the Games, at every latitude and under the wing of technology: 'Compared to Turin 2006, technology has made immense strides but it is a tool like the fax or the Internet, it is useful but it is not a celebration of man, it speaks of something that is already there, not of intuition, which only the human mind can generate. For Milano Cortina, too, we have created an analogue, real, pure show, without special effects. Let's not be fooled, artificial intelligence can do a lot but people need a hug, to meet a friend's eyes. That is why, even though we live in such a virtual age, never before have live events attracted thousands and thousands of people all the time. And you can believe him if Marco Balich, who, in the 1980s, managed, as band assistant and tour manager, Pink Floyd, Simple Minds, U2 and Peter Gabriel, says so. Of course, the Games remain the most glittering and popular trip in the world, even for Balich, who even came close to being called up as a foil player for the 1980 Moscow edition: 'My love for the five circles was born with the practice of sport, but these decades of Olympic events give me the certainty that no platform in the world knows how to communicate equality, solidarity, respect and peace like the Games. An eternal metaphor for life, now they will finally land in Milan Cortina: the San Siro lawn smiles, the blades of grass flicker and it will be a night with polish in our eyes and summer in our hearts. We will clap our hands and all become children again. At least for one night.