MILAN (AP) — Featuring tributes to da Vinci and Dante, Puccini and Pausini, Armani and Fellini, pasta and vino, and other iconic flavors of Italian culture — plus Mariah Carey hitting all the high notes in “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu” aka “Volare” — a unprecedented four-sitedouble boiler opening ceremony got the Olympic Games Milan Cortina Officially started on Friday.
Allowing athletes to participate in the Parade of Nations at the mountain locations for the most widespread Winter Games in history created what may have been an unintended consequence: zero competitors from any of the first five countries announced actually showed up at the main hub, Milan Airport San Siro football stadium.
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As placards bearing the names of Greece – which always leads the parade as the birthplace of the Olympic Games – Albania, Andorra, Saudi Arabia and Argentina were carried to the home of Serie A football titans AC Milan and Inter Milan, no athletes from those places were around. Instead, they took part in simultaneous festivities in Cortina d’Ampezzo in the heart of the Dolomites, Livigno in the Alps and Predazzo in the autonomous province of Trento.
The first country to feature athletes in San Siro was Armenia – and their entrance drew raucous cheers from a crowd filled with 61,000 ticket holders plus others.
Later, Israel’s four representatives were met with some boos at the ceremony in Milan. There have been some calls to ban Israel from the Olympics because of the war in Gaza started with the deadly Hamas attack in October 2023.
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And while US athletes were cheered as they appeared, Vice President J.D. Vance was jeered when he was briefly shown on the arena’s video boards from his spot in the stands. Support for the United States among its allies has been eroding as the Trump administration has taken an aggressive foreign policy stance, including sanctions against tariffs, military action in Venezuela and threats to invade Greenland.
The Venezuelan contingent received a lot of support upon arrival. This also happened from Ukraine, where a war continues four years after the invasion of Russia.
The ceremony’s organizers have said they wanted to convey themes of harmony and peace, seeking to represent the city-mountain dichotomy of this Olympic Games’ particularly unusual format, while also trying to appeal to a sense of unity at a time of global tensions. South African actor Charlize Theron and Italian rapper Ghali delivered messages of peace towards the end of the evening.
“I hope that the opening ceremony is seen by everyone as an opportunity to be respectful,” said Kirsty Coventry, the new president of the International Olympic Committee, when asked this week about possible reactions from the public.
The loudest greeting was of course reserved for host country Italy, which came in last, to an electronic version of ‘The Barber of Seville’.
The ceremony was almost three hours old – and not yet over – when Italian President Sergio Mattarella officially declared the Milan Cortina Games open after a speech by Coventry, the first woman to lead the IOC.
“Thank you for believing in the magic of the Olympics,” she said, minutes later mentioning the “media rights holders” who pay to broadcast the event.
Soon the voice of tenor Andrea Bocelli emerged from Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma’ and the final chorus of ‘Vincerò’, Italian for ‘I will win!’ As he concluded, torchbearers left the arena towards a cauldron at the Arch of Peace, four kilometers from San Siro.
One symbol of how far things have come at these Olympics: Instead of the usual cauldron that is lit and burned during the Games, there were two, both intended to pay tribute to Leonardo da Vinci’s geometric studies. The other is 400 kilometers away, in Cortina.
All three flamethrowers – Alberto Tomba and Deborah Compagnoni in Milan, and Sofia Goggia in Cortina – are Olympic champion alpine ski racers from Italy. Tomba and Compagnoni are retired; Goggia will participate in the 2026 Games.
The entire collection of competition locations for the next two-plus weeks covers an area of approximately 8,500 square miles (over 22,000 square kilometers), roughly the size of the entire state of New Jersey. The multi-city ceremony format allowed for sports in the mountains on Friday, such as Alpine skiing, bobsled, to curl And snowboarding to be represented without people having to make the hour-long journey to Milan.
It didn’t exactly feel like a Winter Games in the country’s financial capital, where the temperature was just below 10 degrees Celsius and the sky was clear azure blue all afternoon on Friday. Not a trace of clouds, let alone snow.
As Italy welcomed the world by displaying symbols of its heritage, the show produced by Olympic ceremony veteran Marco Balich began dancers from the academy from the famous Milan Opera House Teatro alla Scala a reimagining of the marble works of 18th-century sculptor Antonio Canova.
People with oversized mascot-style heads representing opera composers Giacomo Puccini, Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi appeared on center stage, before giant tubes of paint floated above, dropping silks of red, blue and yellow – the primary colors – before an early parade of characters in different colors arrived at the stadium. They represented music and art, literature and architecture, an appreciation of beauty and history and, above all, ‘La Dolce Vita’ (loosely Italian for ‘The Good Life’ and the name of a 1960 film by Federico Fellini).
There were references to ancient Rome, the Renaissance, the Venice Carnival and the country’s well-known traditions in various areas such as cuisine and literature, such as ‘Pinocchio’ and Dante’s ‘Inferno’.
Outfits – created by the late fashion designer – were showcased during a catwalk walk Giorgio Armani, who died last year at 91 – in the colors of the Italian flag: red, green and white. And balladeer Laura Pausini sang the Italian national anthem.
Carey received loud cheers in Milan as she sang in Italian. In Cortina, hundreds of fans sang along with her, and there was a roar when they realized she was performing the song with the chorus “Volare.”
In another local touch, Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore, of “White Lotus” fame, led a segment that took viewers through a century of past Olympics, with examples of evolving equipment, sportswear and music. And actress and comedian Brenda Lodigiani demonstrated the popular Italian hand gestures often used to communicate instead of words.
Associated Press writer Colleen Barry contributed to this report.
