Celine Dion belted her voice from the Eiffel Tower, as Paris kicked off its first Summer Olympics, with a four-hour-long, rule-breaking opening ceremony that unfurled along the Seine River.
With the ambitious ceremony, the stakes for France were immense. Dozens of heads of state and government were in town, and the world was watching as Paris turned itself into a giant open-air theater. Along the Seine, iconic monuments became stages for dancers, singers and other artists. That included the Louvre museum, near where French judo champ Teddy Riner and three-time Olympic champion runner Marie-Jose Perec lit the Olympic cauldron, which was attached to a giant balloon that floated into the night — an homage to early French pioneers of manned flight. As global audiences tuned in, Paris put its best foot forward — quite literally, with a spectacular Olympic launch that lifted spirits and joyous French cancan dancers early on. A humorous short film featured soccer icon Zinedine Zidane. Plumes of French blue, white and red smoke followed.
Lady Gaga sang in French in a prerecorded bit, with dancers shaking pink plumed pompoms, injecting a cabaret feel.
On the Eiffel Tower, Celine Dion closed the show with her first live performance since the French-Canadian singer was diagnosed stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, at the end of 2022.
More than three hours into the show, French President Emmanuel Macron declared the Games open. In a gaffe before that, the five-ring Olympic flag was raised upside down at the Trocadero across from the Eiffel Tower. In some memorable moments, French-Malian pop star Aya Nakamura, the most listened-to French-speaking artist in the world, emerged from a pyrotechnic display in an all-gold out to sing her hit “Djadja” accompanied by a Republican guard band of the French army.
Despite the weather, crowds crammed the Seine’s banks and bridges and watched from balconies, “oohing” and “aahing” as Olympic teams paraded in boats down the waterway that got increasingly choppy as the weather worsened. Many of the hundreds of thousands of spectators huddled under umbrellas, plastic ponchos or jackets as the rain intensified, others danced and sang, and some dashed from their seats for shelter.