Olympic Ceremonies Producer Turns to Sistine Chapel
Known for producing spectacular ceremonies for the Olympics, Marco Balich has turned the majesty of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco into his latest production.
"Universal Judgment" is a multi-media tour-de-force that Balich is staging in Rome through May. Produced with the blessing of the Vatican, the show presents high-definition photographs from the Vatican Museums which are projected on the stage, walls and ceiling.
There is live performance and special effects, such as a storm sweeping across Noah’s Ark.
Sting has composed and recorded a song for the show. Actress Susan Sarandon provides the narration for the once-a-week version in English.
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Morocco Confronts FIFA in Bid for World Cup
Morocco does not seem to trust FIFA president Gianni Infantino when it comes to the upcoming selection of the 2026 World Cup host.
The Moroccans suspect that their bid to organize the football planetary event in 2026 is not only competing against the joint United candidacy of the United States, Mexico and Canada but also Infantino himself.
Hence the letter recently sent to the FIFA President by the head of the Moroccan Royal Football Federation, Fouzi Lekjaa.
In it, Lekjaa denounces what he perceives are "undisclosed changes" added at the last minute to the eligibility criteria in the World Cup candidacy process that he says were not part of the original requisites.
Morocco contends it knew nothing about these alleged amendments and it complains that it received the notification about the new criteria only a few hours before the deadline for bid books to be submitted to FIFA last month.
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IOC Vice-President: Don't Waste Korean Initiative
Juan Antonio Samaranch Salisachs has attended the Olympic Games since he was 12 years old, as the son of the man whom many describe as the great renovator of the modern Olympic Movement.
Among those who believe that is Thomas Bach, who was elected to the first Athletes Commission in 1982. The commission was proposed by the late president of the IOC.
Thirty-one years after that election in Rome, Bach, the Olympic fencing champion in 1976, would become the ninth president of the IOC.
Diplomatic skill seems to be one of his main resources, as was the case for the historic Spanish leader. Although Samaranch could not achieve the success of the dialogue between the two Koreas in 1988, he opened up a communication environment - unstable but meritorious at the end of the day - that nonetheless led to both nations parading together at the Sydney Olympic Games.
Under new circumstances in 2018 the new President of the IOC has continued this process "of being able to listen" in front of a more flexible interlocutor - the same Kim but another Kim - to become last weekend the first leader of the world Olympic body to land in Pyongyang with a millionaire portfolio of aid to the North Korean sport and to converse, also for the first time, with the "Supreme Commander".
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