Lady Gaga performs at Square Barye during the athletes’ parade on the River Seine during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games on Friday in Paris.
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Maja Hitij/Getty Images
The rainy Olympics opening ceremony featured a parade of athletes and an array of dazzling musical performances from start to finish. Here are some of the standout acts, in chronological order:
Lady Gaga and pink pompoms
The first musical performance of the event is from American star Lady Gaga. She emerged theatrically from behind a heart-shaped plume of pink feathers, wearing a black leotard, long black gloves and a feathery headpiece.
She performed the iconic French song “Mon truc en plumes” by Zizi Jeanmaire as black-clad dancers shook pink pompoms around her. Lady Gaga briefly sat down at a piano to play a few bars, all at the foot of a golden staircase on the banks of the Seine.
Metal, Marie and Les Mis
Headless figures depicting the 18th century queen, Marie Antoinette, perform along the Seine embankment outside the Conciergerie, where the queen was held captive during the French Revolution, during the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday.
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Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images
Performers at the opening ceremony in Paris leaned into France’s epic and bloody history, mixing themes from the historical novel Les Misérables and heavy metal performed by the band, Gojira.
Dancers played out themes from the Victor Hugo novel-turned-musical, appearing to move through the Parisian sewers — where story protagonist Jean Valjean evaded police on the crime of theft.
A single shot of the word “Liberté” flashed across the screen, before a beheaded Marie Antoinette appeared and launched viewers to a heavy-metal performance back at the River Seine.
Aya Nakamura takes to a golden runway
Singer Aya Nakamura (center) and dancers perform on the Pont des Arts footbridge during the opening ceremony Friday.
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Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images
Singer-songwriter Aya Nakamura, who emigrated from Mali to France as a child, performed a mashup of her songs Pookie and Djadja in a gold outfit on a runway on the Pont des Arts, which links the Institut de France to the Louvre.
Nakamura is France’s most popular singer at home and abroad, with the New York Times reporting in March that she had 25 Top 10 singles in France.
The Institut de France and the Pont des Arts bridge as a pyrotechnics display takes place while the boats of Team Cyprus, Team Colombia and Team Comoros pass by along the Seine before French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura performed Friday during the opening ceremony in Paris.
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Richard Heathcote/Getty Images Europe
French rapper Rim’K shouts out Snoop Dogg
Algerian-French rapper Rim’K, wearing a red-and-black checkered jacket by Louis Vuitton, took to the stage to perform a song called “King.”
In the song, he notably name-checks rapper and Olympic enthusiast/torchbearer/commentator Snoop Dogg.
Afterward, the NBC hosts checked in with Snoop, who was rocking his Team USA blazer and a pair of shades, dancing with umbrella and microphone in hand.
“Like a drive-in movie, baby,” he said with a smile.
A moving performance of ‘Imagine’ takes place on a fiery raft
Pianist Sofiane Pamart and French Singer Songwriter Juliette Armanet perform “Imagine” on a raft on the River Seine.
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Alex Pantling/Getty Images Europe
As the party scene went dark, all eyes went to two performers on a floating raft. Then, as one of them played the opening notes of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Imagine,” the piano started to burn — literally.
The performance by pianist Sofiane Pamart and singer Juliette Armanet is meant to celebrate a world reconciled and without borders.
“Imagine” is a permanent element of Olympic protocol, per organizers, having been a highlight of many recent opening ceremonies.
Artists from around the world convened to perform “Imagine” at the 2020 Games in Tokyo.
It’s also been performed at the 2012 Olympics in London, and memorably by Stevie Wonder at the closing ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, as a tribute to victims of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing that summer.
Celine Dion makes a highly anticipated comeback
Celine Dion performs under the Olympic rings at the Paris opening ceremony.
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Thibault Camus/AP
Céline Dion capped off the ceremony with a rousing performance of Edith Piaf’s “L’Hymne à l’amour.”
It was a rare return to the public stage — let alone the world stage — for the French-Canadian singer, who has rarely performed since she was diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome in 2022.
The rare and incurable neurological condition causes severe muscle spasms and stiffening in the limbs.
Dion told Vogue France in April that the disease “is still within me and always will be.” She said she undergoes athletic, physical and vocal therapy five days a week.
It’s a much-anticipated comeback for the singer, who was rumored to be involved in the opening ceremony after being spotted in Paris this week.
And, belting at the base of the Eiffel Tower in a shimmering silver dress, she certainly stole the spotlight.
This reporting originally appeared as part of NPR’s live coverage of the 2024 Olympic Opening Ceremony in Paris.