Paris promised, Paris delivered. The opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics went down in history because its organizers started from an enlightened thought: there was no point in holding the party in a stadium when they have the most beautiful city and the most charming river in the world.

Artistic director Thomas Jolly started slowly and then raised the bar. The beginning was a bit scary – the opening with the water jets in the colors of the French flag seemed too simple, and soon the parade of delegations on the boats began.

In the first few minutes, the party brought a dose of French clichés for tourists to see: the accordionist in a beret playing on the bridge, Lady Gaga looking splendid in a black and pink Dior evoking the Moulin Rouge and the revue shows that attract tourists to this day.

The insistence on pink tones in this first part also gave me butterflies. It seemed like Jolly just wanted to have her Greta Gerwig day, doing her own version of “Barbie” in the middle of the Olympic Games. But fortunately that was just the first act.

Little by little, white France was being pushed aside in favor of diversity – a nice slap in the face to Marine Le Pen’s far right. A child with Arab features began by carrying the torch through the sewers of Paris. A quick number paid a fitting tribute to the reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral, with dancers amid the scaffolding.

Among the boats carrying the delegations, Brazil has already secured its first podium, as one of the worst-dressed and most discouraged delegations. The uniform that looks more like a church uniform has been getting hammered ever since it was introduced and has managed to make Brazil – and Brazil, of all people – a less vibrant delegation than those from Canada and China. It only matched the lackluster Botswana delegation, which came right before.

Some powerful moments brought together tradition and modernity in an unusual way, reminding us that France is not just a land of pasts and museums. A cathartic number recalled the French Revolution with Marie Antoinette being beheaded to the sound of the metal band Gojira, followed by the famous aria from Bizet’s opera “Carmen” sung by the Swiss singer Marina Viotti.

At another point, Malian Aya Nakamura, the most popular French-language singer at the moment, performed a Beyoncé-worthy number and got a military band full of white men to dance. A video of three young people in the Paris Library reading classics by Maupassant, Verlaine and Leila Slimani ended with the three… in a love triangle behind closed doors – yes, the “ménage à trois” is also a French heritage. After a drag Christmas Eve, a quick fashion show brought together different ethnicities.

This beautiful salad was a reminder that France is the land of liberty, equality and fraternity, but also of festivity, diversity and sisterhood. The latter appeared at a beautiful moment when the ceremony did justice to great feminists, artists and thinkers of France, with statues erected in homage to Olympe de Gouges, Gisèle Halimi, Louise Michel, Simone Veil, Alice Guy and Paulette Nardal, the first black woman to enter the Sorbonne.

This back and forth between the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, marked the entire ceremony. An animation with the Minions that ended with the Mona Lisa floating in the Seine was followed by the singing of the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, from the top of one of the buildings. In fact, there were many performances from the rooftops of Paris, including the masked figure who rocked the “parkour” all over the city.

With the night in full swing, the final part was a pure party, with dancers exploding on the catwalk of one of the super-lit bridges, to the sound of a medley of dance and techno music. It was less inspiring, but kept the mood high. Juliette Armanet and pianist Sofiane Pamart sang John Lennon’s “Imagine” with a grand piano on fire. The masked man crossed the Seine riding a metal horse with the help of a submarine, a spectacular sight.

To follow the “floats” from the 206 countries that made the Seine have its Sapucaí day, there is nothing better than Milton Cunha’s comments on Cazé TV. Milton gave his opinion on everything from the tiny “snack” in Bahrain to the “anthill boat” with the French delegation, confessed that he “has met some men from Micronesia” and dismissed the fashion show as “sleazy”, among other joking comments.

To make matters worse, the rain was heavy in the second half of the event, and raised concerns about the health of the athletes who will compete in the coming days. Will there be any athletes who fall because the glottis closed in the middle of the Seine? Let’s pray.

In the final stretch, it was moving to see the Fantastic Four reunite on a speedboat traveling at a hundred miles per hour towards the Olympic Cauldron: Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, American tennis player Serena Williams, Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal and American runner Carl Lewis, winner of ten Olympic medals. Confirming expectations, French sprinter Marie-José Perec lit the Cauldron, but accompanied by French judoka Teddy Riner – a black couple, giving the ceremony the final touch of diversity.

To top it all off, Céline Dion, who had not sung in public for a long time due to her illness, embodied Édith Piaf in voice and gestures – no French singer could have done it better – in the heart of the Eiffel Tower. Paris has always been a party, but this time it outdid itself.