Italy celebrates harmony and culture at Milan-Cortina Games opening | OneFootball

In a ceremony held simultaneously at four venues and inspired by the principle of harmony, the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games were officially opened this Friday.

The most anticipated moment of the night took place at 11:27 pm (local time, 7:27 pm in Brasília), when legendary former Italian skiers Alberto Tomba and Deborah Compagnoni, at the Arch of Peace in Milan, and skier Sofia Goggia, at Piazza Dibona in Cortina d’Ampezzo, lit the Olympic cauldrons, inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Nodi Vinciani’.

The flame, lit in November at the ruins of Olympia (Greece), according to tradition, traveled across Italy in recent weeks and now illuminates the XXV edition of the Winter Olympic Games, the third in Italy’s history after Cortina 1956 and Turin 2006, and the fourth overall, taking into account the summer event in Rome 1960.

Mariah Carey in Italian

The ceremony began with dozens of artists and dancers on the field at San Siro stadium, where the opening notes of the show set the tone: to celebrate Italian beauty and culture.

From the myth of Eros and Psyche to the music of three of the country’s great composers: Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, and Gioachino Rossini.

There wasn’t much waiting before one of the most anticipated moments was announced, just 15 minutes after the start: Mariah Carey at San Siro singing in Italian, specifically the classic “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu” (popularly known as “Volare”), with which Domenico Modugno won the San Remo Festival in 1958, followed by “Nothing is impossible,” in English.

It wasn’t the only memorable musical moment of the night, with Andrea Bocelli singing the aria “Nessun Dorma” from Turandot, Laura Pausini performing the Italian national anthem, and opera singer Cecilia Bartoli accompanied by renowned Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Another memorable moment, which will go down in Olympic history, was the entrance of the authorities.

If Queen Elizabeth II arrived at the stadium for the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games in a fictional video guided by James Bond, played by actor Daniel Craig, this time it was in tram number 26 driven by legendary former motorcycle racing champion Valentino Rossi, transporting the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, who occupied the seat of honor in the box alongside the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Kirsty Coventry.

Very close to both was the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance, one of the political figures present at the event.

Parades at four venues

After the parade of delegations at the four venues chosen for the ceremony (Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Predazzo, Livigno), the symbolic and solemn moments followed.

President Sergio Mattarella declared the Games “open,” South African actress Charlize Theron delivered a message of peace by quoting words from Nelson Mandela, and the Olympic flag entered the stadium, carried among others by marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge and Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade.

Everything culminated in the lighting of the cauldrons, to illuminate a particularly extensive area of the Games, spread over 22,000 km² in northern Italy, with the aim of making use of existing facilities and limiting economic and environmental impact as much as possible, after recent editions that were particularly criticized (Sochi 2014, Pyeongchang 2018, and Beijing 2022) for these reasons.

*With content from AFP

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.