When the cultural representation of a country chooses between what reassures the present and what can really open the future.
10 February 2026
The opening of the Winter Olympics is one of those rare moments when the world seems to breathe together. For a few hours the ordinary time is suspended: political differences are reduced, geographical distances are shortened, and millions of people observe the same symbolic gesture. Sport stops being only competition and becomes a collective story; music, intertwining with the movements of athletes and the choreography of the ceremony, tries to give a sound face to a simple and immense idea: the encounter between peoples.
For this reason every artistic choice accomplished during the inaugural ceremony takes on a value that goes beyond the show. It is not only a matter of entertaining, but of representing a cultural vision of the present. The presence of Andrea Bocelli (and not only), a beloved and recognizable voice throughout the world, offered the public an immediate, intense, almost familiar emotion. It is a voice that belongs to the collective memory of many, able to evoke solemnity and participation.
But this is where a silent and necessary question arises: can an event that looks at the future be allowed to always speak with the language of the past? The Olympics are constantly celebrating the new. New records, new athletic bodies that redefine the limits of possible, new stories that emerge from countries once away from the spotlight. Everything, in the Olympic spirit, seems oriented towards what we do not yet know.
The music of the ceremony, on the other hand, is sometimes likely to remain anchored to already established symbols. Reassuring symbols, certainly effective in the immediate, but also predictable. It is not a matter of individual artistic value — that remains out of discussion — but of cultural perspective. Choosing what we know well means exciting immediately; choosing what we do not know yet means taking a risk, but also opening a space of possibilities.
In this sense, the choice of such a recognizable figure also appears as a profoundly "secure" decision: a guarantee of consensus, media recognition, trade balance. Nothing scandalous, of course — the great manifestations also live of these logics. Yet here is a slight, necessary irony: possible that a country with such a vast and restless musical history chooses to present itself to the world always with the most predictable face of itself?
Italy has a tradition able to cross the centuries by continually reinventing itself: from work to the experimental twentieth century, from contemporary research to new sound languages that dialogue with technology, cinema and global cultures. Reducing this wealth to a single reassuring image is likely to transform memory into habit and excellence into formula.
Perhaps the real question does not concern a single artist, but the horizon towards which Italian music wants to move. Chase what is already recognized and easily exportable, or invest courageously on quality, research, surprise? The quality, moreover, has a curious nature: not always reassuring in the immediate, but over time builds prestige, identity, future. It is less noisy than instant success, but much longer lasting.
And perhaps this is the most authentic task of an Olympic event: do not just confirm what we are already, but suggest what we could become.
An inaugural ceremony should look more like a door than a monument. A door opens, lets enter new air, allows to glimpse unexpected languages, sounds able to tell the present in all its complexity. A monument, on the other hand, preserves the memory but remains still, still in time. The challenge lies here: honoring tradition without turning it into habit, recognizing the beauty of the past without sacrificing the courage of exploration.
On that night of light, snow and flags, the music had the most difficult and most beautiful task: not only to accompany the sport, but to indicate a symbolic direction. Remember that unity is not born from repetition, but from the common search for a new harmony. That culture, like sports, lives only when it accepts to change shape.
The Olympics exist to overcome the visible boundaries between nations. For this reason, in closing, it is good to assume a clear position: Italy does not need careful choices to be recognized, but courageous choices to be really listened. Following quality — even when it is less immediate, less commercial, less reassuring — It means believing that culture should not only represent us, but push us forward.
Only in this way will the music be able to return to being, even in the Olympics, not an echo of the already known, but the beginning of something that we still do not know to name.
Marialuisa Veneziano
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