SIMONE FERRARI

Central theme. The central theme of the ceremony is "Armonia" (Harmony). The scenic space is not merely a setting, but a narrative principle. The visual core of the Ceremony was the circle that transforms into a spiral: a primordial form, a universal symbol of continuity, balance, and return. From a creative direction standpoint, could you tell us a bit more about this?

S.F: Armonia was both the subject of the show and a methodological approach. Ours was a heterogeneous team, composed of professionals with different languages and perspectives: Marco Balich, Damiano Michieletto, Lulu Helbaek and Lida Castelli. Each of us had a distinct voice that needed to work in dialogue and harmony with the others. At the same time this ceremony represented the telling of a duality, Milan and Cortina, the city and the mountain. Portraying the harmonising of these two entities was the objective from day one, and this permeated every choice, whether spatial, performative or narrative.

A Dream Team for this Ceremony. Marco Balich appointed you as Creative Director and Deputy Creative Lead within a team of luminaries like Damiano Michieletto, Lida Castelli, Lulu Helbaek, Paolo Fantin and many more. How did you orchestrate the synergy between such strong visions?

S.F: I am grateful to Marco Balich for the trust he placed in me with a role of this kind. Working alongside professionals of this calibre inevitably pushes you to improve and to stretch your abilities a little further. In addition, as you mention, beyond directing certain segments vertically together with Lulu Helbaek, I also had the responsibility of acting as a point of cohesion among many different professionals, which required me to harmonise the various voices as Deputy Creative Lead. There was not a single day when every member of the team did not sit around the table to create something together, leaving egos outside the room. We felt the responsibility of delivering a show capable of conveying universal and elevated messages, and that can only be achieved through sharing and mutual respect. This created the conditions for a show shaped by multiple perspectives, enriching the work of each of us. I do not believe a project of this nature can be a one man show. It necessarily requires a collective dimension and the willingness to embrace diversity of opinion. Ultimately, we also had a great deal of fun together, and I am truly pleased with these two years of working side by side.

The Human impact. Your signature style is often described as an intersection of storytelling and cutting-edge technology. In such a high-profile institutional event, how do you balance technological innovation with the need to convey a universal, "human" emotion?

S.F: From the outset we wanted to create a ceremony that placed the human being at its centre, one that told emotions shared by everyone and capable of functioning as a universal language. Dance and poetry became two of the narrative driving forces of the show, alongside its strong visual impact. I have always liked working with contrasts, therefore an immense space such as a stadium can be transformed by a single action at its centre. Think of the moment when Sabrina Impacciatore runs alone across a stage of that scale. It has something anarchic and alive about it. In contrast there is a choreography performed in unison by one hundred and eighty dancers beneath five rings flying thirty metres above their heads. A ceremony is made of these contrasts, epic scale and humanity.

Career path. Hi Simone, you are known for being the youngest director of ceremonies at the Olympic level, having directed the closing ceremony of the Asian Games in Ashgabat at just 29 years old. From Måneskin and Cirque du Soleil to Chief Creative Officer at Balich Wonder Studio. How has your cross-disciplinary experience, ranging from music and theater to avant-garde performance, influenced your approach to the "large scale" of the Olympics?

S.F: An Olympic ceremony is a melting pot of performative and expressive languages, ranging from the theatrical monologue to large scale mass choreography. It moves from meticulous attention to a single video image to monumental scenography. In a certain way all my experiences have led me to this show, and I am pleased to have reached it at a moment in my career when I had been exposed to different media and languages.

Within it you can find Cirque du Soleil style acrobatics, avant garde dance, theatricality, and a mode of TV broadcasting that is closer to an X Factor show than to an institutional event for certain moments. Certainly having had the opportunity at twenty nine to direct the closing ceremony of the Asian Games allowed me to approach this work with a greater understanding of its dynamics and processes, but I must say that each ceremony is truly a unique entity. It is difficult to become accustomed to the scale of the work and its complexity. It is a remarkable medium to work in, and you can only do it surrounded by people of value who support you constantly.

San Siro as the event scenography.The stadium is considered one of the most beautiful in the world, yet it is a complex structure. What were the technical challenges in transforming the field into a large stage with multiple concentric circles that functions as an "imaginative ice rink”?

S.F: For me, as Milanese, San Siro is a place charged with meaning. It is the football stadium par excellence and also the venue of the largest concerts in Italy. It commands a certain awe and at the same time it carries the weight of its years. It is not a stadium designed to host events of this kind, and this determined many of the choices that later became visible in the show. In addition, the availability of the venue was extremely limited. I believe we were the least rehearsed opening ceremony on site in history. The final Serie A match was played only a few days before the ceremony. In this respect the work of the production and technical team was extraordinary, as the very possibility to rehearse within such constraints constituted an exceptional achievement.

Milano and Cortina: City and Mountain. From a visual, sound, and choreographic point of view, how did you construct a coherent metaphor for the dialogue between humankind and nature, translating the contrast between the urban modernity of Milan and the ancestral identity of Cortina? What were the main challenges in merging poetry (L’Infinito recited by Pierfrancesco Favino), music (with the Stradivarius played by Giovanni Andrea Zanon), and finally the technical feat of the “suspended encounter” of the two performers in flight as a symbol of the promise of unity between distant territories?

S.F: Milan and Cortina were conceived as the telling of a dialogue. To articulate this, we wanted the act to move from the spoken word, through Leopardi’s poetry, to the music composed by Andrea Farri and performed by Zanon, interwoven with the choreographic language of Adriano Bolognino, whose voice is unique within the contemporary Italian landscape. From the outset we sought a large cast of exceptional dancers who could sustain a demanding and extended choreographic structure. The piece is an almost eight minute suite, yet above all they had to bear the symbolic and physical weight of forming the five rings within the stadium. This is one of the most sacred moments of any ceremony, if not the most sacred alongside the lighting of the cauldron. We wanted the composition of the rings to embody, on a narrative level, a human unison, the harmony of differing perspectives converging. Five rings, as five were the clusters of the Games we celebrated within the ceremony. Their union became narratively possible through the leap into the void of the two entities, nature and city. Harmony is also surrender, trust in the other. That leap into emptiness expressed precisely this idea. Witnessing such a flight at thirty metres above the ground is profoundly moving, and I believe it is one of the moments that most clearly encapsulates the essence of the ceremony.

Time Travel. To narrate 100 years of the Olympic Games, you chose a stage with “pop-up” elements and large mobile cut-outs. Where did the inspiration for this two-dimensional visual language come from, one that comes to life in such an instantaneous way? Sabrina Impacciatore acts as a “guide” through the decades. How did you work with her to balance the celebratory tone with the lightness typical of a musical?

S.F: The inspiration is the oldest one in the world, human ingenuity and theatrical craftsmanship. The stage, designed by Paolo Fantin, was operated by twenty six stagehands who lifted and lowered every pop up scenic element during the act, while others were moved on trolleys, always handled manually. 

At the same time an equal number of dancers entered and exited the stage, executing quick costume changes in less than fifteen seconds. It was a show within the show, because every scenic movement was choreographed to the second and calibrated according to where the camera long take was filming. 

At the centre of this “madness” was Sabrina Impacciatore, who generously threw herself without fear into an extremely complex segment. She has an expressive range that moves from drama to comedy, which allowed Lulu Helbaek and me to play with an extraordinary variety of styles. The choreographic work of Beatrice Alessi was relentless and the dancers were very used to her style. Believe me, being on stage for eight minutes at that level of intensity is something heroic, and Sabrina was remarkable. Her run alone towards the centre of the stage remains one of my favourite moments of the ceremony. It contains everything: humanity, emotion, courage. In one word, a spectacle.

At San Siro the audience witnessed a very different performance from the one seen on television. In TV I always like to push for long sequences, because they increase the level of difficulty in the live setting and at the same time create a sense of adrenaline in the spectators at home.

Dove of Peace. Instead of the traditional doves, you chose to create a “human mountain” that transforms into a dove through the dancers’ bodies. What was the technical complexity involved in coordinating this choreographic transformation so that it would be clearly readable on camera? How did the use of lighting and the positioning of the cast on stage help to isolate this moment of reflection from the rest of the celebration?

S.F: For Lulu and me it was essential that the composition of the dove should be charged with meaning and at the same time remain profoundly human and fleeting. The entire act, which opened with Promemoria by Gianni Rodari interpreted by Ghali, was performed by eighty performers under the age of twenty, choreographed by Macia del Prete. Their freshness on stage was fundamental in conveying an idea of peace. The collective effort that generated a human mountain gradually dissolved into the image of the dove, anticipating the entrance of Charlize Theron. 

From this perspective the lighting design by Bruno Poet was outstanding. The stage became a completely monochromatic tableau, articulated entirely through cold white light, which carved the space and sculpted the silhouettes of the performers as they were revealed through their translucent costumes. It was a revelation of humanity. The camera work had to narrate this shared humanity and collective effort, before yielding to a vast dove of light created through a custom made gobo.

Harmony of the Future. To represent the Milky Way, 108 performers create moving galaxies. How did you work with lighting design and mass movement to give the illusion of infinite spatial depth inside San Siro? What was the greatest challenge in coordinating the lighting of the luminous Sun carried by Samantha Cristoforetti with the outdoor cauldrons? It was a true interplay of reflected energy and metaphorical meaning.

S.F: For the first time in history we had two Olympic cauldrons to light, both located outside the stadium, one at the Arco della Pace in Milan and one in the main square in Cortina. This meant that, from a broadcast perspective, the narrative would suddenly expand at a moment that is emotionally charged and sacred. At the same time it was essential to preserve a strong human and spectacular presence at San Siro, both for the seventy thousand people in the stadium and in order to conclude the story where it had begun.

To achieve this we started from three women who look to the stars and question themselves through them, three generations. One of the future, the young Gaia, one of the present, Samantha Cristoforetti, and one of the past, Margherita Hack. This led to the creation of a large scale mass choreography which, from our perspective, became an extended pas de deux with the lighting design of Bruno Poet.

The cauldron sequence itself appears far simpler than it was to organise. Three distinct locations had to interact live, be perfectly coordinated, and avoid any televisual dead time, while sustaining a high degree of emotional intensity. Lida Castelli, as Protocol Creative Director, structured the entire sequence with precision, and hearing the directions of the showcaller Carola Altissimo guiding three separate sites was, for those of us involved, extraordinary. I believe we succeeded in creating a meaningful dialogue between these three places and in establishing a model that may well become a standard for future editions. We are very proud of that moment.

One further element deserves mention. Every day until the end of the games from 6pm in the evening in Milan, at the Arco della Pace, the cauldron is lit each hour with a short performance. This is an important legacy of the project, and the tens of thousands of people who gather daily to witness it testify to the emotional bond that this spectacle has created with the city.

Creative Team

Marco Balich - Creative Lead

Simone Ferrari - Creative Director and Deputy Creative Lead

Damiano Michieletto - Creative Director

Lida Castelli - Protocol Creative Director

Lulu Helbaek - Creative Director

Massimo Cantini Parrini - Costume Designer

Paolo Fantin - Production Designer

Andrea Farri - Music Director

Bruno Poet - Lighting Designer

📷 Tom Jenkins / Matteo Corner / Stefano Rellandini / Cheng Min / Kamilla Yanbukthina