‘It was the perfect of instances, it was the worst of instances.’ Charles Dickens’ opening line of A Story of Two Cities felt unusually acceptable for the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics. To a backdrop of pouring rain, a sequence of extraordinary vignettes rolled out alongside the Seine, generally spectacular and transferring, generally soggy and shoddy. Ceremonies all however executed, after two and a half hours, the crowds in Paris and world wide united in a pant as Mathieu Lehanneur’s torches handed the Olympic flame over to his cauldron. Eyes, spirits and cauldron rose into the air concurrently.
Lehanneur has risen to the problem of making a spectacle laden with symbolism. For a designer whose work is extra normally characterised by ethereal class, he has mixed an ideal sense of event while avoiding bombast and sustaining dignity. It looks like a very long time in the past since we have been launched to his torch, with its promise of ‘symmetry to precise a message of equality. I needed it to be extraordinarily pure, iconic and nearly important. Easy like a hyphen and fluid like a flame,’ Lehanneur mentioned of his design.
After being carried throughout continents, nations, and latterly by the arms of a number of French Olympians previous and current, the torch arrived on the Tuileries, on the foot of the large balloon that has mystified Parisians within the week because it arrived of their metropolis. Three-time judo champion Teddy Riner and three-time gold-winning sprinter Marie-José Peréc did the honours with the ultimate leg of the torch, lighting a 7m-wide round base beneath the balloon. The Tuileries was the situation of the primary sizzling air balloon flight by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. In 2024, hearts soared as Lehanneur’s balloon cauldron took off into the air.
Though that is the third time that Paris has hosted the Olympics, the Olympic flame was solely launched in 1928, so that is the primary time town has needed to take care of hearth in addition to the athletes. The formidable opening ceremony of Paris 2024 unleashed past the stadium and into town at massive can be remembered for its cauldron second alone. It’s simple to be cynical in regards to the function of ceremony in our trendy lives however, for a quick second, Lehanneur and the Paris 2024 workforce achieved that uncommon sense of magic, when everyone seems to be stunned, spellbound and uplifted. Let the video games start.
mathieulehanneur.fr
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