The Paris 2024 opening ceremony: welcome back to the City of Light, for the Greatest Show on Earth 

"Citius, Altius, Fortius" — Faster, Higher, Stronger — declared Pierre de Coubertin at the Sorbonne in 1894. And Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, took the words of the inventor of the modern Games as a personal challenge it seems.

Apollinaire and Prévert; Hugo and Molière; Monet and Van Gogh; Kelly and Caron — the list of great artists who have tried to capture the essence of the river Seine and the city it caresses is endless. But none of them were afforded the extraordinary resources that Thomas Jolly and his trusted choreographer from the Opéra de Paris, Maud Le Pladec, were given to organise their glittering extravaganza.

Thomas and Le Pladec were chosen for their contemporary styles, their freshness, their creativity and the daring of their work. With these two at the wheel, one thing was certain: we would have to expect the unexpected...

Inevitably, the ceremony itself kicked off on the big screens, with a video of Zinedine Zidane sprinting through the Paris streets, holding the flame aloft, and leaving a pile of tourists and café tables in his wake like a succession of Italian defenders.

But immediately an element of mystery was introduced, as the legendary World Cup-winner descended into an abandoned métro station to hand over the flame to a masked figure who would become one of the main protagonists of the evening...

If Zidane was expected to make an appearance, the next performer came as more of a surprise. Suddenly the banks of the Seine were transformed into a scene from a 1950s Marilyn Monroe number: all pink feathers, high heels, sheer tights, and high-kicking, tuxedo-clad dancers. Enter Lady Gaga - who else - to make the first show-stopping live appearance of the night.

All in black and emerging from behind two giant pink ostrich feathers on a gold staircase, Gaga purred, "bonjour".

The Marilyn Monroe-inspired 1960s song and dance routine that followed —in Français, s'il vous plaît —was a fittingly kitsch tribute to the glory days of French music-hall and featured Mon Truc en Plume by Zizi Jeanmarie.

But time waits for no woman, not even Gaga, and as the Greek delegation led the flotilla of boats carrying the athletes slowly up the Seine, the most famous cabaret on Earth took the baton from the American megastar as the dancers of Moulin Rouge, performed a French can-can for the ages that Barbie herself would have been proud of — all in pink.

As the first act of the ceremony came to a close, thoughts turned to an altogether more sombre event. When the World watched in horror on April 15, 2019, as the most iconic cathedral on the planet was engulfed in flames, no-one imagined that Notre Dame would feature tonight. But here we were, five years later, and the eternal lady had risen again.

For the occasion, the scaffolding that had been a permanent reminder of that fateful day, had been transformed into a stage for the 20 dancers of the Retouramont dance company as they honoured the artisans so critical to the the cathedral's renaissance. Maud Le Pladec's spectacular choreography, set to music from Victor le Masne using the sounds of the many traditional tools that were deployed in the rebuilding of the edifice, paid a fitting tribute to the extraordinary efforts deployed in the rebirth of Notre dame which is expected to reopen later this year.

By now, the river Seine had become a medley of colour and dance, of theatre and gymnastics, and even hard rock as Gojira, a popular French band, became the first hard rock act to perform in an Olympic Games opening ceremony with their version of Ah! Ça Ira, a song that was popular during the French Revolution.

On the giant screens around the city, tributes were paid to the inventors of cinema, the Lumière brothers, to the great French inventors and authors of science fiction and our masked figure entered the halls of the Louvre museum to discover that the Mona Lisa had disappeared...

And then came one of the most iconic moments of the ceremony: Paris can proudly claim that 50% of the participants in these games are women — a first in the modern Olympic era. To celebrate this achievement and the women who fought so hard to make this moment happen, a stretch of the river between the Concorde and the Alexandre III bridge had been dedicated to "the golden women" of France.

One by one, ten gold statues of female personalities who have moulded French history were revealed, bringing loud cheers from the specators gathered on the riverbanks.

This was a key moment in proceedings as Thomas Jolly shone a spotlight on the giants of French history who had been hitherto largely invisible in the public arena.

If any onlookers still remained unmoved by this tribute, Jolly was not going to stop there: high above the Paris skyline, perched on the roof of the Grand Palais, the mezzo-soprano Axelle Saint-Cirel's rendition of la Marseilleise had everyone reaching for their handkerchiefs.

The same could be said of Juliette Armanet's towering interpretation of John Lennon's Imagine — accompanied on a flaming piano by the virtuoso French pianist, Sofiane Pamart. And when Aya Nakamura emerged from the Académie Française to perform her hits Djaja and Pookie with the band of the Republican Guard, there was a sense that she was poking fun at dissenting male voices who had opposed her appearance at the Games.

But what of our mysterious masked figure?

Not to be outdone by the glittering array of artists on show, our enigmatic champion chose this moment to emerge from the shadow of the Austerlitz bridge, cloaked in the Olympic flag, and astride a galloping mechanical silver horse, to begin a spectacular ride along the Seine towards the Trocadero.

As the bridges of the Seine saluted our lone cavalier with giant luminous dove's wings that lit up the Paris night, the flagbearers made the short crossing between the Seine from the Eiffel Tower to the Trocadero Plaza. All eyes turned to the Seine as the Olympic flame made its entrance at Trocadero, accompanied by a quator of Olympic legends in Carl Lewis, Raphaël Nadal, Nadia Comanechi and Serena Williams.

But who would light the Olympic cauldron?

France has a proud and stellar Olympic history, and speculation had reached fever pitch in the days leading up to the Games. How could such an honour be bestowed on one person?

Once again, the organisers side-stepped the chatter, and for the first time in history, two people would light the cauldron together, and who could possible be more fitting for the role than Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec — both triple Olympic Gold medallists?

The eyes of the World were on the two champions as they stepped towards cauldron, each holding their own Olympic flame. The scene that was being broadcast live to a billion people worldwide, seemed uniquely intimate as they smiled sweetly at one another before lighting the cauldron and sending it aloft into the Paris night sky — a touching moment that was in keeping with the theme of solidarity and diversity that ran through the whole ceremony.

As the cheers faded gently into the Parisian night, the gathered crowds turned their attention once more to the finale and a question that has been on everyone's lips for weeks now: will Céline make an appearance?

Right on cue, their question was answered, as a tiny figure emerged below the Olympic rings on the opposite bank of the Seine. The emotion was palpable as the spectators held their breath in unison anticipating the first notes. Would Dion's inimitable voice be up to the challenge?

Any doubts were dispelled immediately, as Dion eased into Edith Piaf's definitive tribute to unconditional love, L'Hymne à l'Amour, slowly building crescendo until there wasn't a dry eye left in the City of Light.

A fitting final anthem for an opening ceremony that was a celebration of love, solidarity and diversity in all their forms, from beginning to end.