A MESSAGE TO THE WORLD

We have all managed to become part of something really great. This happened on the day when the grandiose opening ceremony of the First European Games took place in Baku, when all the might of the composing genius Uzeyir Hacibayov resounded in the world arena through the Azerbaijani national anthem, compelling music making people to have a lump their throat, keenly felt and causing heart ache. "May your gardens blossom! Create, dream, make. We have devoted a heart full of love to you, Azerbaijan!" The words of our country's anthem automatically resound in your head, but the opening ceremony was carried away by a whirlwind of spectacular pageantry permeated with a profound sense of history and the symbolism of Azerbaijani culture, of the reunion of East and West and the opportunity offered by coexistence, here and now on the ancient earth of the Land of Fire.

"The Azerbaijani flavour" of the East

It is symbolic that the story of the European continent's new sporting games should come to a climax precisely in the arena of the new Baku Olympic stadium. And it started with mugham music played by the world renowned singer Alim Qasimov, counting backwards from 24 to zero to the rhythmic "cannonade" of the Azerbaijani nagara [folk music instrument]. Twenty-four is the number symbolising the restoration of the state independence of Azerbaijan in 1991. The entire ceremony was essentially permeated with latent and obvious symbols of "Azerbaijani-ness", this and the mosaic of the dresses of the 1,000 dancers on the stage creating the decorative patterns of the universally known Azerbaijani carpets with their skirts.

Then they recreated the Azerbaijani flag, followed by the phenomenon of the last torch-bearer, twice Para-Olympic champion, twice world champion and five-time European champion Ilham Zakiyev with his impaired eyesight, bearing the "Atasgah" [fire temple] flame of the First European Games. This and the magnificent Azerbaijani classical music by the unforgettable Qara Qarayev and Fikrat Amirov. This and the lively scenes from the world of reveries and the works of the extremely great [12th-century] Azerbaijani poet and thinker Nizami Gancavi, Leyla and Macnun, the Sun and the Moon and a beautiful representation of the symbol of Azerbaijan, the pomegranate. Everything breathed the spirit of our country, without being too sickly sweet and bursting with showy emotion and it seemed in an atmosphere of the true spirit of our great ancestors.

A delightful picture was created in a highly sophisticated manner amidst a vast scenic backdrop, the picture identifying with the four elements of nature, namely earth, wind, water and fire, and essentially God, who is everywhere. You see, the self-creating philosophy of the East regard the surrounding world is present here, a more balanced philosophy independent of the environment and oriented on unity with nature. Today, although diminished somewhat under the pressure of the modern technological civilisation, the differences between East and West, as demonstrated by the opening of the European Games, still remain quite considerable.

This is mainly explained by a certain "eastern" type of thinking closely bound up with eastern religions, which are thought to be more tolerant of beliefs and better "woven" into the fabric of the culture. But Azerbaijan has shown the whole world that the coexistence of East and West is possible on the firm basis of ethnic tolerance, peace and kindness and, what is most important, mutual respect. It is no accident that the torch was brought into the stadium to the accompaniment of the Fifth Symphony by Jean Sibelius, a Finnish composer of Swedish origin. But the cracking earth can be found everywhere, both in the East and the West, the main thing is with what water you water this soil and what kind of seeds you plant in it. But here, in the Olympic stadium, right before the very eyes of all those there, the extraordinary natural environment of Azerbaijan came to life surrounded by mud volcanoes.

Hello, Europe!

We can coexist and we do have things to teach each other. At the opening ceremony, the Azerbaijani East was presented as something uniformly "eastern" with its great belief in the perfection and harmony of the Universe, from whence the orientation is not on transforming it, but on adaptation to some kind of "cosmic rhythm". In Russia the Russian philosopher Petr Chaadayev also wrote about the differences between East and West: "The human mind was created in the East by concentrating, going down into one's very depths, and shutting oneself away; in the West it developed by spread everything from within, throwing light on all sides, and struggling against all the impediments. This is partially correct.

Evidence of these words today is provided by the fact that Europe, as part of the western world with its striving to "spread everything from within", with its inherent skill and technologies, is welcoming the First European Games in Azerbaijan which only covers 10 per cent of the European continent. How subtlely that expansive European thinking was felt by the organisers of the ceremony: it was reflected in the white bull with a girl on its back soaring over the stadium, which was followed by flashing constellations. This is a silhouette of the European continent which can be seen from space at night. According to legend, Europa was the queen of the Phoenicians. Captivated by her beauty, the Greek god Zeus turned up in front of her on the sea shore in the form of a white bull. The amazed Europa got onto the back of the bull. Zeus instantly kidnapped her and swam across the sea to the Greek island of Crete, located off the southern shores of the continent. There Europa bore Zeus three sons. One of them, Minos, was the legendary founder of the first European enlightened civilisation. The continent was named in honour of this legendary eastern queen; her image on the back of the bull is a symbol of the continent of Europe. The flight of Europa and the bull over the stadium was accompanied by the music "On an overgrown path" by the Czech composer Leon Janacek, performed by the Norwegian pianist Hakon Austbjo. This section reflected the official opening of the First European Games.

Europe also demonstrated its "technogenic nature" on the stage of the Baku Olympic Stadium in a tableau in which a video and the inventions of the European Organisation of Nuclear Research and the scientists working at it was broadcast. Among them was our famous fellow countryman, the Nobel prize winner Lev Landau. This proves that nothing and no-one in this world can co-exist autonomously. In its address, the European Organisation of Nuclear Research, which has been uniting people of science for more than 60 years now, appealed to the peoples of the world for peace. The main output of the organisation, which unites more than 10,000 physicists and engineers representing more than 100 peoples is the Great Hadron Collider. It is the biggest machine in the world and is kept at the centre of Europe, in the depths of the Earth. The flashes emanating from the LED-lamps surrounding the stadium created the effect of the Great Hadron Collider's operation.

Co-existence

The symbols were everywhere. They were in John Lennon's composition "Imagine", in the appeal for fraternity and unity which Lady Gaga sang immersed 

in a piano of flowers, and in the procession of the sportsmen's teams from 50 countries and in the waving of 50 flags. It began with the strains of a musical fragment from the work of the American composer Aaron Copland "Fanfare for the common man" and continued with the accompaniment of the rhythms of 50 nagara players conducted by Natiq Sirinov.

Then came the fireworks. The lights in the stadium went out. Once again, Alim Qasimov and his mugham music, similar to a call for prayer, the adha. He sang on a flying carpet, a fanstastic means of being transported through the air. Although this idea predominates in the literature of the Middle East, the popularity of the fairy-tales "One Thousand and One Nights" has brought it to western civilisation. Alim Qasimov's voice carried up and away into the unimaginable expanses of the universe and to the formations beyond time. The strength of the singer's mystical charisma fully corresponded to the ritual action that was taking place on the stage.

A woman was walking across the cracked earth. She was holding samani [grass], the symbol of Novruz [spring festival in Azerbaijan], heralding the arrival of spring. Grass is sprouting under her feet and flowers are blossoming. Her long, transparent shawl was flapping in the breeze. When she reached the middle of the stage, the woman put the samani on the ground next to the torch of the First European Games. A spring of water burst forth from the soil, a gigantic basin came to life in front of the woman, a symbol of the Caspian Sea. She slowly approached the water, turning round and looking at the picture that had appeared behind her. A hundred men came out of the ground whose clothes were soiled with mud and clay. They began to perform the ritual Azerbaijani national dance in time to the rhythm of the nagara players. Then an earthquake happened, the earth opened up and the gap increased in size. Cliffs, which came together to form a gigantic mountain, began to rise up from under the ground. The fiery silhouettes of people, animals and boats appeared along its edge. These are the ancient rock drawings of Qobustan.

And here they are, trembling and cordoned off. The men who have emerged from the gaping earth now appear on the summit of the mountain. The sounds of the Azerbaijani song "Sari galin" ["Blond Bride"] played on the balaban [Azerbaijani folk wind instrument], interrupt the silence, with "the golden-haired bride" (how else should Europe look? - author). A man takes up the hot stone beneath his feet. These scenes were accompanied by the overture from Fikrat Amirov's ballet "A Thousand and One Nights".

The man holding the hot stone looked at the woman opposite - at the shore of the Caspian Sea, and went over to her side. A shining round black shield behind the woman gradually rose above the water and went up into the sky to become the Moon. Tongues of flame shooting out of the cracks have turned into giant human figures on the Earth. This was like lava flows which have taken the form of huge petroglyphs and the eternal flame of Yanardag [the burning mountain where natural fires burned out]. The petroglyph gradually transforms into the image of a man, an analogy to the first person on Earth, and all this a reminder of Leonardo da Vinci and his Vitruvian person who demonstrates the ideal proportions of the human figure, the principle of the golden birth.

Holding hands, the man and the woman ran towards the shield and threw the hot stone at it. The burning shield turned into a ring of fire, recalling a grandiose space panorama - the full eclipse of the sun. The fire of the First European Games which is the symbol of unity and peace surges towards the heavens. Here the sky is decorated with different-coloured fireworks over the Caspian and the Olympic stadium, creating an atmosphere of vast festive activity. The torch will burn until the end of the Games, becoming a beacon for the whole of our city.

The fireworks in the sky and on the ground - the Azerbaijani national dance, the "Yalli". Twenty thousand spheres, "pomegranate seeds" were sprinkled over the spectators as a mark of love, the embodiment of success and the symbol of Azerbaijan. The grandiose opening ceremony has ended. With it Azerbaijan wrote the first unforgettable page in the history of the European Games. This was a vivid demonstration of the fact that the East and the West can co-exist and how they can interweave with one another organically. Whereas in the East they have succeeded in developing one human phase, in the West they have succeeded in developing another. Therefore we need to combine the two today. The effort of Azerbaijani experts in inviting the best brains in the world community is a magnificent confirmation of this. When world history is made in the country where you live, then you become part of something great.

INTERESTING

The artistic director of the opening ceremony of the European Games - the Greek Dimitris Papinoannu, who achieved great world fame for staging the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. The musical director Theodor Currentzis, laureate of the "ECHO Award" for opera recordings. The set designers - Thanassis Demiris and Eva Manikadaki, the architects and founders of the Flux Office company, designing creative architectural spaces, drawing up designs and involved in the stage production of Thanassis and Eva. They have received awards for their work in the field of architecture, the theatre, opera, dance and film, which was demonstrated at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014) and the Venice Film Festival (Miss Violence 2013) and at other international events.

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The skirts of the dancers' dresses were sewn from a total of 16,000 sq m of material. This is fabric the size of 13 Olympic swimming pools.

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The carousel of the live book with miniatures from the works of the Azerbaijani thinker Nizami Gancavi, moved using the moving scenery of know-how Baku 2015

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Sixteen lasers were used to draw up the map of the European continent. It is the first time that such a big number have been used to create such a large-scale animation on the stage