Thomas Jolly inaugurated the Paris 2024 Games in grand style. Delivering a grandiose and erudite score of Parisian and French symbols, the young Norman delivered a historically unprecedented Olympic Games opening ceremony that will immediately make history.
“Forever first.”
This term is as fitting for the French team’s first Olympic medallists, from day 1 of the competition (vs. day 4 in Tokyo), as it is for the director of the Olympic Games opening ceremony and his faithful acolytes in charge of music, costumes and choreography.
The exploits of Shirine Boukli, France’s first official medal (bronze in judo) and Luka Mkheidze (silver in judo ), and swimmer Léon Marchand, winning a first gold medal in the 400 m medley on the second day, were just some of the challenges facing Thomas Jolly and Thierry Rebould.
Hailed by international media such as Marca as “the greatest ceremony in history” and the British tabloid The Sun as “Seine-sational” by the IOC, the opening ceremony, which took place in the City of Light on Friday July 26 at 7.30pm, was a grandiose performance showcasing the wealth of French know-how.
In France, the event broadcast by France 2 attracted 22 million viewers, the second-highest audience ever in France behind the France-Argentina Football World Cup final in December 2022.“If you’re going to get out of the stadium, you might as well get out of the frame,” said the young director. He added : “I chose to shake up the established order, interweaving show time, the athletes’ parade and protocol to create an unprecedented structure.”
In addition to the pouring rain, there were moments of grace and intense emotion, such as Céline Dion singing the Edith Piaf’s Hymn to love from the top of the Eiffel Tower, after a four-year absence for health reasons, or an array of Olympic athletes relaying the Olympic flame. There was the poignant exchange between former soccer star Zinedine Zidane and tennis player Rafael Nadal, 14-time Roland Garros champion.
Despite a wealth of ingenuity and an emphasis on representing French culture in all its diversity, the event did not fail to provoke some controversy on the web, particularly popular with certain international delegations.
A challenge presented as impossible
Addressing the police forces mobilized for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the decisive role of homeland security in the success of the event: “What you did yesterday, everyone seven years ago told us it was impossible to do […] all the experts who told us it’s criminal madness, it will never be done, we won’t make it, it’s impossible.
Thomas Jolly ‘s masterly performance of “twelve tableaux on all the emblems of the city of Paris and the senses they produce” lasted nearly 3 hours 15 minutes.
A feat worthy of a top-level sportsman, he mobilized so many people (18,000 only for the ceremony) and so much energy. All with a single mission, and not the least: to ensure that the festivities are beautiful, popular and , above all, make people forget the gigantic Olympic bashing that raged in the country in the run-up to the competition.
Thomas Jolly orchestrated a river parade outside a stadium – the first of its kind in Olympic history – involving 85 bateaux-mouche (6,800 athletes representing 205 delegations) along 6.3 km of Paris quays, between the Pont d’Austerlitz (13th arrondissement) and the Pont d’Iéna (16th arrondissement), ending in front of the Trocadéro and the Eiffel Tower.
Known for his flair for spectacle, laser lighting and his ability to blend different references, the Normandy-born theater and opera director, tasked with telling an engaging story with some 3,000 dancers, acrobats, musicians, performers and singers, succeeded in attracting a massive audience of 326,000, most of whom stayed on despite the rain.
He was able to count on the help of presenter Daphné Bürki, appointed director of styling and costumes in June, and Victor Le Masne, the ceremony’s musical director.
To complete this dream-team, Thomas Jolly also benefited from the advice of historian Patrick Boucheron and playwright Damien Gabriac. Finally, to ensure the 200 days of rehearsals required for the event, particularly for the dancers, the Norman was accompanied by dancer and choreographer Maud Le Pladec.
An ode to French culture
Moving with great ease between high and pop culture, with Aya Nakamura performing a medley of her greatest hits (Pookie, djadja) with some of Charles Aznavour’s melodies alongside 60 musicians from the Republican Guard and 36 choristers from the French Army, the opening show for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was a testament to French savoir-faire.
Aya Nakamura performs a medley of her greatest hits alongside the Garde Nationale orchestra, to the melodies of Aznavour, a cultural melting pot that Thomas Jolly favors in his work, as does his acolyte Victor Le Masne, musical director of the ceremony © France TV
It was a question of its traditional craftsmanship (Louis Vuitton workshops), its French-language music scene (French variety, French touch, rap), its animated films (Studio Illumination from the Ecole des Gobelins, creators of the Minions) or its canaille, cabaret and even kitsch with Lady Gaga paying tribute to dancer Zizi Jeanmaire ‘s famous song “Mon truc en plume”. The performance, on a monumental golden staircase reminiscent of the steps of the Grand Palais, featured dancers using pink pompons from the famous Lido, now closed for good. Dancers from the Moulin Rouge performed a French Cancan.
Lady Gaga performed the Music Hall artist’s hit song “Mon truc en plume”© France TV
Another part of the French repertoire, some legacies of the revolutionary period, were also present: alongside the essential Marseillaise hymn sung by mezzo-soprano Axelle Saint-Cirel, the revolutionary song “ça ira ” was revisited by metal band Gojira.
Literature and video games (Ubisoft) were also in the spotlight with the figure of the mysterious flame-bearer, whose silhouette oscillated between two anti-heroes: that of the historic Assassin’s Creed franchise (two installments of which were set in Paris, including Unity, which sold 155 million copies) and that of Gaston Leroux’s seminal work, The Phantom of the Opera. Navigating smoothly from one point of the City of Light to another, the masked role fell to Simon Nogueira, French freerunning champion and network star. He has 4.1 million followers on TikTok and almost 390,000 on Instagram.
Classical and contemporary dance featured prominently, with 1,800 dancers from all over France, including the Gratte Ciel and MazelFreten companies. The event culminated in a performance on the roof of the Paris Opera by prima ballerina Guillaume Diopp.
The monuments of Paris were not left out, with the Louvre, the Monnaie de Paris (creator with Chaumet of the Olympic medals), the Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Pont des Arts and the Musée d’Orsay.
Historical and contemporary works of art were particularly well represented, from statues of the twelve “Golden Women ” (from Olympe de Gouges to Gisèle Halimi, via Simone Veil) to five XXL female silhouettes from the Louvre collections, such as Georges de la Tour’s Tricheur à l’as de trèfle, Madeleine, femme noire by Marie-Guillemine Benoist (1800) and Gabrielle d’Estrées, painted by an anonymous artist around 1594-1595.
Atelier Blam, Nantes, designed the silver-colored mechanical horse.
Paris interlope also had its 15 minutes of fame, with a queer fashion show electrified by LGBTQIA+ dancers and figures. Paris boasts a veritable savoir-faire in haute couture that is the envy of the world. In addition to the luminous outfits of celebrities such as Céline Dion and Lady Gaga in Dior and Louis Vuitton worn by rapper Rim K, it’s the young guard of French fashion design such as Charles de Vilmorin, Jeanne Friot (who designed the costume of the masked horsewoman in collaboration with leather master Robert Mercier).
The final balloon-shaped cauldron (by designer Mathieu Lehanneur), lit by two key Guadeloupe ambassadors in the Tuileries gardens, paid tribute to the first flight of a hydrogen balloon by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. The final torchbearers were two-time individual Olympic gold medallist and eleven-time world judo champion Teddy Riner, alongside three-time Olympic champion Marie-José Perec.
A shower of controversy
Among the dozen or so song-and-dance tableaux proposed by Thomas Jolly was one entitled “festivités”. Thought up by Daphné Bürki as “the biggest clubbing-guinguette in France” according to the director’s wishes, this part of the show was entrusted to DJ Barbara Butch. She found herself at the center of a giant banquet whose table served as a podium for the many dancers present, including dancer Germain Louvet and drag queen Piche.
The staging, which began with static dancers in differentiated poses on either side of the table and its haloed mistress of ceremony-ambianceuse of the moment-concentrated many of the angry messages on social networks.
The Catholic episcopate condemned what it and other Catholics saw as blasphemous mockery of believers. Indeed, the staging of this sequence on the Debilly footbridge was reminiscent of a parody of the Last Supper, Jesus’ last meal and Leonardo da Vinci’s landmark work.
Under fire from critics, Thomas Joly denied any desire to mock the sacred: “You will never find in me any desire to mock or denigrate anything. I wanted to make a ceremony that would repair and reconcile,” he declared.
To those who thought they had detected an obvious similarity with the work of the brilliant Italian Renaissance inventor, Thomas Jolly preferred to divulge his source of inspiration, the painting The Feast of the Gods by 17th-century Dutch painter Jan van Biljert, exhibited at the Musée Magnin in Dijon. “The idea was rather to make a great pagan feast connected to the Olympian gods… Olympus… Olympism.” He adds, “I think it was pretty clear, there’s Dionysus arriving on this table. Why is he here? Because he’s the god of celebration (…), of wine, and father of Sequana, a goddess linked to the river.”
The interpretation of the whimsical singer Philippe Katerine as Dionysos, the Greek god of celebration, wine and excess, has provoked much misunderstanding, particularly in the United States © France TV
Speaking of Dionysus, whimsical singer Philippe Katerine’s half-naked rendition, disguised in blue paint, was seen as particularly subversive. The American channel NBC preferred to send an advert, as reported by the newspaper l’Equipe. Moroccan public broadcaster SNRT preferred to evade the sequence by broadcasting images of the city of Paris. Embarrassment was also observed in Australia and China.
The scene in the conciergerie showing decapitated Marie-Antoinette was not to everyone’s taste, particularly on the far left and, unsurprisingly, among royalists. The Duke of Anjou, Prince Charles-Philippe d’Orléans, “wept with shame”, calling it “one of the most shameful moments of this ceremony”. According to him, the performance was all the more shameful and inappropriate in that it took place in the presence of numerous invited European monarchs, including those of Spain, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, the Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg and Prince Albert of Monaco.
But the most diplomatic mistake of all was made by the IOC, which presented the South Korean athletes as “ République populaire démocratique de Corée ‘ in French, then ’Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” in English, the official name of North Korea, its sworn enemy. The IOC was forced to apologize.
Despite the occasional hiccup, the opening ceremony was well received by the French. According to a survey conducted the following day by Harris Interactive/Toluna for the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (COJOP), 86% considered it a success, 75% felt proud at its conclusion and 81% considered it historic.
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Featured Photo: © Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Committee
