Grapevine: Ferrari steal the show in Turin

Rollerbladers, red flames shooting from their helmets, sped across a stage. Cows danced and men in lederhosen played alpenhorns while the Stadio Olimpico built by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1933 rocked to modern beats.

But it was a red Ferrari, symbol of Italy's postwar industrial power, that stole the show.

The team's test driver Luca Badoer steered an all-red Formula One car - with the Olympic rings on the engine cover and rear wing, along with Italy's flag on the nose cone - screaming on to the stage, completing five tight turns as fireworks shot into the sky.

Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi opened the Games and IOC President Jacques Rogge encouraged athletes to play fair.

"Please compete in a spirit of fair play, mutual understanding and respect and, above all, compete cleanly by refusing dope," he told athletes massed around him centre stage.

"Our world today is in need of peace, tolerance and brotherhood. The values of the Olympic Games can deliver these to us," he told a crowd where US first lady Laura Bush and Cherie Booth, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, sat side-by-side among monarchs, heads of state and other dignitaries, including Ferrari president and Fiat CEO, Luca di Montezemolo.

For the first time, eight women carried the Olympic flag.

Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren, the epitome of Italian beauty and style, was joined by Chilean writer and activist Isabel Allende and Wangari Maathai Kenya, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace prize for her environmental work to promote peace.

Passion

Marco Balich, executive producer, said: "We worked around the passionate way the Italians approach things, good and bad. The way they drive, the way they eat, the way they dress."

It was passionate - certainly when Kenya's one competitor and Italy's team entered to all but a standing ovation - and a celebration of sport and all things Italian. Hundreds danced in their seats, rang cow bells and waved torches as athletes marched to 70s and 80s music on to the stage.

Spectators gasped when volunteers dressed in blue, green, yellow and pink, formed the shape of a ski jumper, equipped with jet-black skis. Inching across the stage, the volunteers made the jumper hunch up, jump and then slowly open up on landing.

The Italian theme, racing through Dante to futuristic art, heralded the entrance of eight past Italian Winter Olympic champions, who relayed the torch between each other.

It was a surprise choice to send Italian former cross country skier Stefania Belmondo to light the flame.

The athlete, who recently gave up competitive sport to have a family, carried the torch to spark a volley of fireworks that travelled up a spire to light the Olympic cauldron.

That followed a reading of Dante's "Divine Comedy" and a gilted fairytale scene of opulent dining and fanciful characters in carriages reminiscent of Italian director Federico Fellini.

Men and women in powdered wigs ambled around Renaissance-style geometric gardens. Tall princesses in huge skirts surrounded the stage, their skirts lifted to reveal girls swaying on small swings.

Soft music accompanied the portrayal of Sandro Botticelli's "Birth of Venus", when Roberto Bolle of La Scala Ballet School, burst on the stage to a techno soundtrack.

Bolle, more used to portraying princes in the "Nutcracker" or "Swan Lake", wore a white bodysuit and an orange Mohican and danced with the statue of Futuristic Man by Umberto Boccioni.

Acrobats in silver climbed a vertical net to form a dove. Yoko Ono called on all to spread the word of peace before Peter Gabriel sang her husband John Lennon's "Imagine".

Only showman tenor Luciano Pavarotti could finish it all off with a flourish, singing "Nessun Dorma" before massive curtains fell to draw the ceremony to a close.