PARIS (Reuters) – Paris broke with tradition on Friday by turning the Olympic Opening Ceremony into a parade down the River Seine rather than a stadium-based show. TV viewers around the world were treated to a spectacle performed on bridges, the riverbank and rooftops, culminating with French athletes Marie-Jose Perec and Teddy Riner lighting the Olympic cauldron and a performance from Canada’s Celine Dion. However, the 6,000-odd athletes, 3,000 performers, 300,000 spectators and dozens of world leaders had to endure heavy rain for much of the event.
Here’s how the world’s media judged Paris’s ambitious ceremony: FRANCE Newspaper Le Monde wrote in a rave review that director Thomas Jolly “succeeded in his challenge of presenting an immersive show in a capital transformed into a gigantic stage”. Right-leaning Le Figaro said the show was “great but some of it was just too much”. It said viewers “could have been spared” images including an apparent recreation of the painting of The Last Supper of Jesus and his apostles in front of a fashion show.
UNITED STATES “Opening Ceremony Misses the Boat” headlined the New York Times’s television review. It wrote that the river parade “turned the ceremony into something bigger, more various and more intermittently entertaining. But it also turned it into something more ordinary — just another bloated made-for-TV spectacle”.
The Washington Post was more glowing, noting that the organiser’s “bold thinkin.