Verona ready for final act of Winter Olympics

A city forever associated with Romeo and Juliet, Verona will host the final act of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics on Sunday inside the ancient Roman Arena, where some 1,500 athletes will celebrate their feats against a backdrop of Italian music and dance.

Acclaimed ballet dancer Roberto Bolle has been rehearsing for the closing ceremony inside the Arena di Verona under a veil of secrecy, along with some 350 volunteers, for a spectacle titled Beauty in Motion, which frames beauty as something inherently dynamic.

“Beauty cannot be fixed in time. This ancient monument is beautiful if it is alive, if it continues to change,” said the ceremony’s producer, Alfredo Accatino. “This is what we want to narrate: An Italy that is changing, and also the beauty of movement, the beauty of sport and the beauty of nature.”

Other headlining Italian artists include singer Achille Lauro and DJ Gabry Ponte.
The Arena has been a venue for popular entertainment since it was first built in 1 AD, predating the larger Roman Colosseum by decades. Accatino said the ancient monument will produce some surprises from within its vast tunnels.

"Under the  Arena there is a mysterious world that hides everything that has happened. At a certain point, this world will come out,” Accatino said, promising “something very beautiful.”

The ceremony will open with athletes parading triumphantly through Piazza Bra into the Arena, which once served as a stage for gladiator fights and hunts for exotic beasts.

The closing ceremony stage was inspired by a drop of water, meant to symbolically unite the Olympic mountain venues with the Po River Valley, where Milan and Verona are located, while serving as a reminder that the Winter Games are being reshaped by climate change.

Verona, in the same Veneto region as Olympic co-host city Cortina, was chosen for its unique venue and relatively central location, said Maria Laura Iascone, the local organizing committee’s head of ceremonies. “Only Italians can use such monuments to do special events, so this is very unique, very rare,” Iascone said of the Arena.

ASSOCIATED PRESS