Olympic opener: color, whimsy, big-head composers

So it turns out that Italy has quite an impressive history.
The early minutes of the Olympic ceremony remind us of that. It has hints of fashion and film, art and opera and more. It referred to Verdi and Da Vinci and Armani and Fellini; it didn’t mention Mussolini, but time was limited.
It even played the Lone Ranger theme song, although in Italy (and most of the world) that’s a tune about an archer shooting an apple off his kid’s head.
(Italy, it should be noted, had made some of the greatest cowboy films in history, just none about masked men. It’s also pretty good at art and opera.)
All of that is in the first 40 minutes of the telecast, which airs from 8-11 p.m. today (Feb. 6) on NBC.
I can tell you about it because of the quirks of time zones. With a six-hour difference, this aired live at 2 p.m. ET, where it could be seen by the unemployed and journalists; it repeats at 8 for the rest of the world.
What I can tell you is basic: Those 40 minutes air commercial-free, full of color and whimsy. You see lots of dancers dressed in white, then enormous paint pods emerging from the heavens, then lots of color.
You hear Marah Carey, the daughter of an opera singer, sing. You see swirling circles and lots of dancers, three of them wearing the enlarged heads of composers. It’s kind of fun, actually.