Excellent! What a great performance.

France offered a superb pyrotechnical experience. For my concern, I was eager to see what France was preparing for OUR EARTH inhabitants and us (Fireworks Aficionados). I was curious to find out if they had what was needed to take the first position and win the competition.

The introduction was breathtaking. A slow progression of Fireworks on the lake occupied and caught our attention until they surprised us with a magnificent display that lightened up the Montreal’s sky and they kept that intensity and beauty for a great period of time. A delightful music offering was to complement this powerful and efficient beginning.

A wide variety of explosions (mainly linear and circular) helped in a very well structured fashion to build a great “architecture of light” in the sky. The show was very emotional and engaging. A lot of the “tableaux” (La Terre, L’Eau, etc…) were easily perceptible, although, some were more difficult to perceive but it didn’t affect the level of creativity that this performance was having in store. I believe that France offered a very high quality product, very sophisticated, with much refinement. “Our Earth” displayed and presented technical tour de force, with good orchestration. I’ve found the music very well suited for their visual and quite creative in order to evoke some elements of their “tableaux”.

I have to say that for the first 17 minutes I was absorbed and riveted to the spectacle, watching the show and barely allowing myself to blink, not wanting to miss anything. Then, I started to see some flaws (minor desynchronization, less coherence between the visuals and the soundtrack). From that moment, I began to perceive less judicious transitions between segments. Personally, (I know it is French spectacle but) the French Carrousel and Music was a bit discordant with the rest of the show. It seemed to me that the performance had that international and UNIVERSAL intent but it didn’t appeal to me in the evolution of the performance. The spectacle made me fly high in the sky but this brought me back to OUR EARTH. My goal here is not to say that French shouldn’t be French but this is how my brain reacted to this segment.

After that, the French team came back, for the rest of the show, with a strong and efficient segment that showed beautiful fireworks poetry. It was lyrically, visually and musically moving. A poignant section that enabled me to recapture the feelings I’ve had at the beginning of their show. I was able to taste the profound and substantial professional qualities this French team holds.

The exit of the final “tableau” wasn’t exalting enough to be memorable. Which led me to think that they could have done better, knowing their level of competence and proficiency.

Finally, I would like to point out that those things were minor moments from that great experience and that I want to say thank you to the French team to have offered such an exceptionally high quality competition to Montreal.

So, having said all that, I’ve came to conclude that this was a very creative work, with high level of technicality performance which was powerful but not an uplifting, engaging and exhilarating experience as what the Swedish team offered me.

It was an excellent show.