Hi everyone,

Although off-competition, please feel free to post your reviews/comments for the closing display here.

Trav.

One more time, the weather was a primary issue of this fireworks evening in Montréal. Luckily, the rain stopped around 8:45pm. The awards ceremony, which started around 9:15pm, and the closing show at 10pm were held under partly clear skies. However, the winds were weak and slowly blew the smoke towards the audience at La Ronde. As a result, about 60 seconds after the start of the display, visibility became almost zero for approximately two minutes. It also decreased to the same poor level during the finale, where we heard a series of powerful barrages but saw almost nothing but a cloud of dark grey smoke. For most of the time, however, we could reasonably see the extravaganza prepared by Rozzi Fireworks in collaboration with manufacturer Panzera, with the soundtrack crafted by competition technical director Paul Csukassy.

A “Tribute to Metallica” could not be further from my musical preferences. That being said, I have seen some people much more enthusiast around me, as the grandstands were more crowded than for most shows this season, but nonetheless less busy than most previous closing nights (that was definitely not a capacity audience). The soundtrack appeared to be well-edited, but I wonder what was the logic underlying the line-up of songs. In the past, the list of music released by La Ronde for this «Finale des étoiles» included certain labels which testified to a certain structure, for example according to the stages of the career of the celebrated singer or band. It was not the case with this tribute to Metallica.

On the positive side, this show was very intense with absolutely no dark moment and, despite the visibility issue, I don’t believe that any significant technical failure prevented the launch of the material across 4 out of 5 firing ramps (I suspect the fourth ramp was not used, as has happened several times this year). We saw a number of nautical products too. Unsurprisingly, the products were similar to those exhibited in the American show, both being done by Rozzi Fireworks with producted supplied by Panzera. So there were a number of multi-break shells and, I suspect, very vivid colors which could not be fully enjoyed due to the poor visibility. Furthermore, the stereo effects were very noticeable several times during the show and added to the experience.

The musical choice aside, one of my main criticisms I have is that fireworks sounded too powerful during the (rare) serene moments of the show, a weakness I underlied in my review of Rozzi’s competition display too. During one of them, some horsetails gently appeared, but chrysanthemums also exploded at the same time. On The Unforgiven, the loud cakes of crackling and/or bombettes didn’t fit with the quiet music. Another criticism is that several sequences appeared to mismatch different colours or kinds of fireworks. For instance, we could see successive barrages of three peonies, two being of one color and the third being of another color. During other sequences, I could see a mix of red and purple stars, or red and pink stars, and I was not sure whether the mix was done by design or by mistake.

The series “Finale des étoiles” has been introduced to the competition in 2010 and has become the label of the closing show since then. So far, it has emphasized international and English-language performers (Beattles, Queen, U2, Pink Floyd, Madonna, Elton John and James Bond), with the exceptions of Céline Dion in 2010, Serge Fiori/Harmonium as part of the Montréal 375th anniversary in 2017, and a soundtrack made of French-language musics for the Loto-Québec Casino de Montréal 25th anniversary in 2019. I suggest that La Ronde/Six Flags should target a better balance between international and national, English- and French-language performers.

The countdown was performed live by Michel Lacroix and the Grande Roue was correctly turned off. On the side of the Jacques-Cartier bridge, the situation was similar to the one which occured on July 27 (Canada), when the lights were turned off, then immediately turned on with their post-show sequence.

In contrast with last year, where the British and Hungarian representatives missed the awards ceremony reportedly due to a traffic jam, the winners were all there. Newly designed trophies have been introduced this year. It is the third model since the beginning of the competition. In collaboration with Mylène Salvas, I found the previous one had been introduced in mid-1990s. She managed to illustrate all three in her latest story published in Les ArtsZé. Photos of the newest design can easily be found on social media.

Also, it was mentioned that some Six Flags’ leaders were in the attendance, namely the President and CEO Selim Bassoul, and Vice President Operations and Engineering Jason Freeman. Loto-Québec Vice President, Benoît Lefrançois, has referred, without identifying the environment issues and the cancellation of the opening show, to the many challenges that La Ronde team had faced during this 37th edition and the leadership of the director in charge of the competition, Marianne Lemieux, and La Ronde President Sophie Émond. In her speech, Sophie Émond mostly acknowledged the contribution of the event partners and the work achieved by her crew. She also mentioned that people come from all areas of Montreal (“des quatre coins de la Métropole”) to see the show: it should be recognized instead that audience comes from much further. Each summer, I meet people from Vermont, New Jersey and Michigan who travel in Montreal strictly to attend the fireworks competition, and I am sure there are countless others.

There was no mention about the fate of the opening show arsenal. Some rumors are that it could be displayed during the Labor Day weekend, but it is more likely, in my opinion, that the announced “Tribute to Boy and Girl Bands” will be presented next year for the opening of the 38th edition, inasmuch as the competition continues in this adverse context.

Fred