Vangelis - The Opening Ceremony of Athens 1997 (Part 1of9)

The Panathenean Stadium (Panathinaiko Stadio) of Athens, a 90,000 spectator, ancient all-marble stadium, was the site of the Opening Ceremony of the 6th IAAF World Championships in Athletics of 1997 held in Athens. The concept of the ceremony, the direction, the artistic and musical supervision was solely by Vangelis Papathanasiou. The European News Channel Euronews airing long parts of the ceremony at the Panathenean Stadium, characterized the Opening Ceremony of the 6th World Championships in Athletics as magnificent and grandiose and added that this bravura was a clear message from Athens to the world for the claim of the 2004 Olympic Games. At the beautiful all-marbled ancient stadium where Olympics Games were brought back to life in 1896, as Euronews journalist denotes, Vangelis Papathanasiou, the pope of electronic music as he calls him, did not only fascinate the spectators inside the stadium but the whole world who watched through satellite. Concluding, the journalist calls the