Historian analyses Paris Olympic Games Opening Ceremony

Screenshot of the controversial tableaux

Theatre historian Dr Philip Crispin writes:

There has been a lot of brouhaha in response to the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games staged on Saturday evening and much lamenting of a perceived mocking reference to the Last Supper - as depicted by Leonardo da Vinci.

I hope an historical perspective lent to my own observations will prove instructive.

Nobody could doubt the ambition of the mise-en-scène on the Seine. Rather than the traditional performance in a self-contained Olympic arena, this was to be a free-flowing four-hours long extravaganza along the river itself with other pre-filmed linking moments projected on screens. 'Merrily we roll along' was the intention: a key-note joie de vivre for 6.5km from the Pont d'Austerlitz and under 17 more bridges to the Eiffel Tower.

It certainly was joyful to see all the athletes parading down the Seine: 205 delegations in 85 craft - bateaux mouches, paquebots and motorised wherries. And they all looked to be having a whale of a time in their Olympian uniforms (some splendidly bright and folkloric). Rather than marching for a few minutes around an arena, here they were at the centre of events and travelling in style for rather longer. Even if it was raining on their parade in Biblical deluge fashion, nothing could extinguish their delight.

A refugees' Olympic team was honoured at the start of the procession as over 300,000 watched on from the quais.

There was a focus on youth and giddiness from the outset. Fireworks and water cannon both recalled the splendours of Versailles. A lone accordionist played from the centre of Austerlitz Bridge and we were soon treated to frou frou celebrations of French cabaret, boulevards and the belle epoque in a section dubbed La Vie en rose. Performing amidst a sea of pink feathers, Lady Gaga descended a golden staircase to deliver Mon Truc en plumes. The troupe from the Moulin Rouge, also in pink, danced the can-can. Various pink postcards and pink rugbymen and giant pink heads dotted the quais but we didn't have any real chance to see their shenanigans and much else besides.

The Olympic fleet passed the lofty statue of St Genevieve who had saved Paris from Attila the Hun, and is its patron, and was soon passing the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Here filmed footage of aerial acrobats paid homage to the masons, builders and indeed to all the workers in the city. The footage was accompanied by chiming minimalist music which distantly evoked Quasimodo the Hunchback of Notre Dame's bells. Five hundred dancers performed a mesmerising set of synchronised regimented moves, kicking up water from the fountains in which they moved, while Guillaume Diop, the French-Senegalese principal dancer with the Opéra de Paris danced gracefully a-top the Hotel de Ville.

A strange figure clung to the tapering spire of Notre Dame, recalling the famous Gargoyle of Viollet-le-Duc.

All this time, a masked athletic torch-bearer had borne the Olympic flame, up from the catacombs and the subterranean Canal Saint-Martin, leaping across roof-tops and along zip wires. Filmed footage showed the mystery figure pass into the Paris Mint where Olympic medals were being struck from melted remnants of original parts of the Eiffel Tower. (Nine parkour athletes played this role throughout the evening.)

The flotilla was now passing by the Ile de la Cite. Here, on the Pont Neuf, was an equestrian Henri IV who had to renounce Protestantism to claim the French throne. 'Paris is well worth a Mass.' he had said. Just below the statue of Henri, Jacques de Molay, General of the monastic Knights Templar had been burned at the stake on the orders of Philippe le Bel (keen to get his mitts on the rich order's treasures). Nearby on the Right Bank was the Tour St Jacques, meeting place for pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostela and the former department store La Samaritaine which had taken its name from a statue of the Samaritan Woman at the Well.

The athlete armada was now athwart the Conciergerie which had been the medieval royal palace and seat of government, law and administration. The glorious Sainte Chapelle, built to house the Crown of Thorns, is part of this site.

But none of these religious landmarks were namechecked - or indeed part of the avowedly secularist script. France of course is l'Etat laïc. Instead we were treated to a form of grand guignol, son et lumière, panto-style celebration of the French Revolution. The Conciergerie was of course the prison par excellence for those awaiting execution. The head, cradled in the arms of a headless Marie-Antoinette, sang out the revolutionary 'Ça ira'. In fact she had clones at many windows. A heavy metal band sang and played from others as the downpour increased and a soprano in a pirate hat sang the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen from the poop deck of a cut-out medieval ship which evoked the one on Paris's coat of arms. Red fireworks detonated and a vast number of red ribbons flew into the air: the Terror was reduced to the kitsch.

After kitsch, came some filmed coquetry. Three lovely dancers (one female, two male) flirted with each other in the Bibliothèque Nationale Richelieu (named after the great Macchiavellian cardinal) from over the tops of French classic books on love. They danced off for a Jules et Jim-style ménage-a-trois in an artist's garret while outside tightrope walkers, acrobats and circus artists danced a polyamorous dance on stilts and wires across the Paris skyline. Bright love hearts adorned all the costumes and an airforce jet drew out a pink love heart in the sky overhead.

I have seen no knowing reference to this by the production team but the parading Olympic flotilla and other aspects of the production evoked felicitously the Royal Entries of the ancien régime when monarchs were welcomed into a city (often after their coronation) by means of a parade and there was much pageantry and allegorical performance - some on floats and some in mock sea-battles. During the 100 Years War, when the young Henry VI of England was crowned king of France he was offered large red hearts from which white doves were released and flower petals rained down over the procession. Quelle coincidence! Doves' wings, too, evoking peace, were on display throughout the opening ceremony.

On the Pont des Arts, which connects the Institut de France to the Louvre, the French-Malian superstar singer Aya Nakamura - dressed all in gold with a golden retinue of dancers, all evoking court masquers at the Versailles of the Sun King - sang Aznavour and her own sassy smash hits, accompanied by the band and drums of the generally more ceremonial Republican Guard. It was a daring and successful mélange.

Thence to the Louvre, where to the accompaniment of Saint-Saens' Danse macabre we were shown filmic evidence of the subjects of many chefs d'oeuvre absconding from their paintings. Other giant famous painted heads were appearing from their eyes up in the Seine. Very Monty Python. Pianist Alex Kantorow played Ravel's Jeu d'Eau from a splashy keyboard as the rain lashed down. We learned later that all the music was pre-recorded.

It was a shame that no homage was paid to either Aimé Césaire or Léopold Senghor (co-founders of Négritude and great writers) alongside whose quai and pont the flotilla were passing, though I am sure Césaire would have applauded Axelle Saint-Cirel, the superb Guadeloupean mezzo-Soprano, who sang a feminist Marseillaise from the top of le Grand Palais. Her tricolore Dior dress evoked France's revolutionary female personification of Marianne. As she sang, nine golden statues of great French women emerged from beneath the waters.

A tenth failed to emerge though this mechanical failure ensured a numerical parity with the Nine (male) Worthies who used to feature during the medieval Royal Entries. These included Charlemagne, King Arthur, Julius Caesar, David, Joshua and Judas Maccabeus. Other classical, biblical and local heroes would feature too.

The golden statues were principally from the modern era though there was also room for Christine de Pizan who championed women in the Middle Ages. There is a massive preponderance of male statuary and name-checking in Paris and this section devoted to 'Sororité' was a response to ongoing feminist activism. The statues should all find homes after the Olympics.

Next came chapters devoted to 'Sportivité' - street sports like skateboarding and BMX bikes in period costume on floating pontoons - and then 'Festivité.' Cue a fashion show on a Paris footbridge with flashing neon-lights and a great deal of dancing on the bridge and a light-fantastic pontoon.

From the start of the ceremony, entitled 'Allons enfants', this Olympic opening quite fittingly had focused on young, beautiful people, and now into the mix tripped a gamut of queer and cross-dressing icons. A screen-shot of self-styled 'love activist' DJ Barbara Butch in front of her turn-tables and surrounded by people, queer and straight, led to the accusation of an irreligious evocation of Da Vinci's Last Supper. Butch was coiffed with a sort of spoked halo head-piece. This fact and the appearance of about 11 others around her on-screen (others were in fact out of shot) appeared damning for those outraged. Even here, confusion reigns however, as others lambasted a latter near-naked appearance in the centre of the catwalk of singer-actor Philippe Katerine, painted all blue in the centre of a tray of fruits and flowers, supposedly evoking Bacchus (though the golden-bearded Katerine made me think more of Bacchus' twinkly tutor Silenus). In any event, the whole section was linked to a seventeenth-century Dutch old master painting Le Festin des dieux (The Banquet of the [Olympian] gods) by Jan van Bijlert exhibited in the Magnin Museum in the French city of Dijon - itself inspired by Da Vinci's Last Supper.

I personally totally overlooked any Da Vinci reference. Even if the director Thomas Jolly had referenced Leonardo, he and his team make the crucial point that their Opening is all about an inclusive celebration for everyone. Christ himself urged going to the highways and byeways to bring everyone in.

Further to the racial and sexual diversity being celebrated throughout the evening, an amazing disabled break-dancer and a deaf, signing dancer, made clear the profound commitment to love and community.

And if there had been some intention to shock? Satire, frivolity, merriment and indeed anti-clericalism are key to French performative culture. Again, possibly without being aware, throughout the evening Jolly had tapped into the satirical festive performances of the medieval Parisian fools, the sots, the 'carefree children' played by French law clerks who were themselves based in the Parlement de Paris (now the Conciergerie). These fools were also famed for their sauts, their leaps, their physical acrobatics. They also wore masks. (This chimes with the evening's athletic masked torch-bearers.) Among their number were cross-dressers, none more outrageous than Mère Sotte, Dame Folly, who had satirised war-mongering Pope Julius II himself. The festive law clerks liked to stage their own parades called monstres, showings, akin to the great showing of the Olympic boat parade of the evening. For the Opening Ceremony, the Royal Entries and the monstres, the city itself was the stage.

The Royal Entries liked to impart royal propaganda through their allegorical performances. In the same way, sections entitled Sororité, Fraternité and Solennité carried clearly political messages a-plenty.

Indeed, the blue, near-naked Philippe Katerine sang a song called 'Nu' which was a plea for peace:

'Would there have been wars if we'd remained stark naked?

No.

Or hiding a revolver when we're stark naked?

Where?'

He pointed out on France Inter radio that nudity was at the very origin of the Olympic Games. His song came just prior to a rendition of 'Imagine' on a burning vessel - intended to evoke environmental destruction. Lennon's song is another visionary plea for peace.

We then have to ask why - when Russia and Belarus are banned from the Olympics for military aggression - is Israel, accused of Genocide, Apartheid, manifold war crimes, human rights abuses and serial floutings of UN resolutions, allowed to participate. A hard question but many around the world would detect hypocrisy at play.

The evening was too long. Many great and beautiful crowning glories of French culture were missing, the literary in particular. There were too many longueurs.

A masked horsewoman in silver armour delivered the Olympic flag to the Trocadero, opposite the Eiffel Tower. Was she supposed to evoke Joan of Arc (a cross-dresser, too) or Sequana, a Gallo-Roman goddess of the River Seine, as were both variously suggested? In either event, her gallop up the Seine on a mechanical horse was very long. The flag was then raised upside down and there was a brash laser show from the Eiffel Tower before Celine Dion sang Edith Piaf's tragic Hymne a l'Amour from the Tower in her first public performance since 2020, bringing the ceremony to a close.

Just prior to this, the Olympic flame was lit and its lighting fuelled a great golden balloon to climb into the night sky above the Tuileries gardens. A glorious nocturnal sun.