The Very Best Moments From the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics
Vogue
July 27, 2024
The 2024 Paris Olympics have had a lot to recommend them: an array of impossibly beautiful backdrops; a starry cast of commentators, including the likes of Alex Cooper and Snoop Dogg; and competitors like Simone Biles, Sha’Carri Richardson, Katie Ledecky, and Coco Gauff that viewers everywhere are thrilled to get behind.
It was only fitting, then, that the Games should begin in spectacular fashion. French theater director Thomas Jolly helmed an opening ceremony unlike any the Games had seen before—unfolding along the River Seine with all manner of top-tier performers on hand to animate the route. As a crowd including Sarah Jessica Parker, Tom Cruise, Pharrell Williams, Christopher Maloney, Elizabeth Banks, John Legend, Greta Gerwig, and thousands upon thousands of Parisians looked on, these were some of the very best moments of the Paris 2024 opening ceremony:
The start of the procession
The opening ceremony began with a bang: With an explosion of bleu, blanc, and rouge over the Austerlitz Bridge, the (waterborne) parade of nations began with the Greek delegation, followed by the Refugee Olympic Team.
Lady Gaga turning the Seine into a cabaret
Bonsoir, bienvenue en Paris!, Lady Gaga cried as she kicked off her long-rumored performance at the opening ceremony, doing a joyous rendition of Zizi Jeanmaire’s classic standard “Mon Truc En Plume.” Surrounded by dancers wielding flamingo-pink poufs, she was dressed in Dior Haute Couture.
The sense of theater—and the heavy metal
Jolly’s opening ceremony drew on all kinds of performing arts, stitching together musical phrases from The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, Georges Bizet’s Carmen, as well as a thrilling set by the French heavy metal band Gojira at the Conciergerie. A little later, as a troupe of modern dancers splashed near the Notre Dame and acrobats flew over the Pont Neuf, ballet dancer Guillaume Diop—the first Black principal dancer at the Paris Opera—performed a lyrical solo.
Aya Nakamura seizing the Pont de la Concorde
Aya Nakamura, dressed in a feathery gold minidress by Dior, gave a rousing performance of her 2018 hit “Pookie” before transitioning into “Djadja.” She was joined by a gaggle of dancers, as well as the Orchestre de la Garde républicaine.
The Jeux d’eau in the rain
Photo: Getty Images
French pianist Alexandre Kantorow gave a gorgeous performance of one of Ravel’s best-known pieces for the piano—variously translated as “Fountains,” “Playing Water,” or “Water Games”—as the rained came down in Paris.
Axelle Saint-Cirel singing from the roof of the Grand Palais
The Parisian mezzo-soprano was a vision as she sang a stirring new arrangement of “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem of France. Her eight-meter-long dress, also by Dior Haute Couture, was actually attached to the French flag she brandished.
The fashion show!
The likes of Farida Khelfa and Ines Rau catwalked across a footbridge over the Seine during a segment of the ceremony inspired by Paris’s fashion community.
The scene at the Trocadero…and then the Tuileries
After a glowing mechanical horse carrying the Olympic flag flew down the Seine—and images and videos from Olympics past were spliced together into a rather affecting highlights reel, representing the achievements of athletes from around the world—a mysterious cloaked figure marched solemnly down the Trocadero, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, before the Olympic Hymn played.
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Then, following remarks from Tony Estanguet, president of Paris 2024, and Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, King of Clay Rafael Nadal, Carl Lewis, Nadia Comăneci, and Serena Williams boarded a boat with the Olympic torch—heading in the opposite direction. Where were they headed? To meet tennis legend Amélie Mauresmo, who, after a jog up to the Louvre, passed the torch on to a series of athletes including former basketball player Tony Parker, former handball players Michaël Guigou Allison Pineau, and 100-year-old former cyclist Charles Coste.
At the end of the relay were former sprinter Marie-José Pérec and judoka Teddy Riner, who lit an enormous hot-air balloon in the Tuileries Garden.
Céline Dion performing from the Eiffel Tower
Dressed in a shimmering beaded Haute Couture dress, Dion—who, as some may recall, sang “The Power of the Dream” at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta—made a much-anticipated appearance to perform “Hymne à L’Amour,” a song popularized by Edith Piaf in the 1950s. In so doing, she brought an utterly unforgettable opening cermeony to a thoroughly moving conclusion.
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