Why Milan's Olympics Chose Nostalgia Over Innovation

A 300-year-old Stradivarius violin echoed through the arena as dancers in angel wings recreated an 18th-century neoclassical sculpture. The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics opening ceremony began not with drones and LEDs, but with Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss—a work created about a century before the lightbulb was invented.

When the Future Feels Too Heavy

Recent Olympic ceremonies have felt like tech conference keynotes or music festivals. 2024 Paris transformed the seventh arrondissement into a massive light show and devoted considerable airtime to Minions. 2022 Beijing looked uncannily like a laptop screensaver, while 2021 Tokyo featured minimalist soundtracks and overhead drones.

Italy chose the opposite path entirely. Color-saturated Roman centurions marched alongside people dressed as moka pots. Visual gags celebrated pasta, paparazzi, and the film La Dolce Vita. The great composers Verdi, Puccini, and Rossini appeared in bobblehead proportions, like Minor League baseball mascots—history literally turned into cartoon.

Even Mariah Carey, the show's major modern performer, was dressed like an Old Hollywood starlet, singing an exceptionally breathy version of "Nel blu, dipinto di blu"—a song from 1958. At nearly every moment, the reference point was decades to millennia in the past.

The Reality Outside the Arena

While angels danced inside, protesters gathered in Milan's streets. They demonstrated against various competing governments and the festivities themselves, amid a major affordability crisis gripping the city. During the Games, organizers will use 3 million cubic yards of artificial snow—because in Northern Italy, as everywhere else, the sky can no longer be reliably expected to behave as it used to.

The 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games are already beset by cost overrun concerns. The Olympics represent one of our oldest global institutions, which is another way of saying they're somewhat archaic—invented in and for a different world.

The Comfort of Certainty

Italy's choice wasn't just about showcasing Renaissance heritage. The production itself was deliberately retro: minimal lights, mostly classical music, traditional choreography. With few exceptions, the entire show could have been produced anytime in the past 40 years.

This wasn't technological limitation—it was conscious rejection. In an era where climate change forces artificial snow, where affordability crises drive citizens to protest, where the future feels increasingly uncertain, the past offers something precious: certainty.

The ceremony became a live museum exhibition, a psychedelic tribute to a bygone Italy that never quite existed but feels more real than our current moment. When innovation means disruption and progress feels threatening, nostalgia becomes a form of resistance.