LONDON (AFP) - Britain opened its Olympics with a royal entrance like no other.
London greeted the world in a celebration of Old England that was stunning, imaginative, whimsical and dramatic - and cheeky, even featuring a stand-in for Queen Elizabeth II parachuting with James Bond into Olympic Stadium.
Industrial Revolution Sequence of the Opening Ceremony - London 2012 Olympic Games -- Official Olympic Channel by the IOC, YouTube
Moments later, the 86-year-old monarch herself stood solemnly while a children's choir serenaded her with God Save The Queen, and members of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force raised the Union Jack.
Much of the opening ceremony was an encyclopaedic review of British music history, from a 1918 Broadway standard adopted by the West Ham football team to The Who's My Generation to Bohemian Rhapsody, by still another Queen.
The evening started with fighter jets streaming red, white and blue smoke and roaring over the stadium, packed with a buzzing crowd of 60,000 people, at 8.12 pm (3.12am Singapore time).
An explosion of fireworks against the London skyline and Paul McCartney leading a sing-along were to wrap up the three-hour opening ceremony masterminded by one of Britain's most successful film-makers, Oscar winner Danny Boyle.
The director of Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting had a ball with his favoured medium, mixing filmed passages with live action in the stadium to hypnotic effect, with 15,000 volunteers taking part in the $42 million (S$52 million) show.
Actor Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean provided laughs, shown dreaming that he was appearing in Chariots Of Fire. There was a high-speed flyover of the Thames, the river that winds like a vein through London and was the gateway for the city's rise over the centuries as a great global hub of trade and industry.
Headlong rushes of images took spectators on wondrous, heart-racing voyages through everything British: a cricket match, the London Tube and the roaring, abundant seas that buffet and protect this island nation.
A pulsating soundtrack including snippets of the Sex Pistols' version of God Save The Queen - an anti-establishment punk anthem once banned by the BBC.
To open the ceremony, children popped balloons with each number from 10 to one, leading a countdown that climaxed with Bradley Wiggins, the newly crowned Tour de France champion. Wearing his race-winner's yellow jersey, Wiggins rang a 23-ton Olympic Bell from the same London foundry that made Big Ben and Philadelphia's Liberty Bell.
Its thunderous chime echoed around the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium. Bells in Britain have traditionally pealed to celebrate the end of war and the crowning of kings and queens, and now for the opening of a 17-day festival of sports.
The show then shifted to a portrayal of Britain that Britons cling to - a place of meadows, farms, sport on village greens, picnics and Winnie-the-Pooh, Alan Alexander Milne's bear who has delighted generations of British children tucked warmly in bed.
But the British ideal - to quote poet William Blake, of 'England's green and pleasant land' - then took a darker, grittier turn.
The set was literally torn asunder, the hedgerows and farm fences carried away, as Boyle shifted to the industrial transformation that revolutionised Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries, the foundation for an empire that reshaped world history.
Belching chimneys rose where only moments earlier sheep had trod.
The Industrial Revolution also produced terrifying weapons, and Boyle built a moment of hush into his show to honour those killed in war.
'This is not specific to a country; this is across all countries, and the fallen from all countries are celebrated and remembered,' he explained to reporters ahead of the ceremony.
'Because, obviously, one of the penalties of this incredible force of change that happened in a hundred years was the industrialisation of war, and the fallen,' he said. 'You know, millions fell.'
Olympic organisers separately rejected calls for a moment of silence for 11 Israeli athletes and coaches slain by Palestinian gunmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Two of the Israelis' widows appealed to audience members to stand in silence when International Olympic Committee chief Jacques Rogge rose to speak later at Friday's ceremony. The Israeli culture and sport minister planned to do just that.
The parade of nations featured most of the roughly 10,500 athletes - some planned to stay away to save their strength for competition - marching behind the flags of the 204 nations taking part.
Greece had the lead, as the spiritual home of the games, and Team Great Britain was last, as the host. The tradition of athletes marching into the stadium by nation at the opening ceremony began at London's first Olympics, in 1908.
It fell to the queen to declare the games open. Last month, the nation put on a festive Diamond Jubilee - a small test run for the games - to mark her 60 years on the throne, a reign that began shortly after London's last Olympics, in 1948.
The Olympic cauldron was to be lit with a flame that was kindled May 10, at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics in Greece, from a reflection of the sun's rays off a mirror.
Since then, 8,000 torch-bearers, mostly unheralded Britons, have carried the flame on a 70-day, 12874km journey from toe to tip of the British Isles, whipping up enthusiasm for a US$14 billion Olympics taking place during a severe recession.
The identity of the last torch-bearer, the one to light the cauldron, was kept secret - remarkable given the intense scrutiny at what have been called the first social media Olympics.
Speculation focused on Roger Bannister, the first man to run a four-minute mile, in 1954, and on rower Steve Redgrave, among others.
The show's lighter moments included puppets drawn from British children's literature - Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmations and Lord Voldemort from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, as well as Mary Poppins.
Their appearance had a serious message, too - the importance of literacy.
'If you can read and write, you're free, or you can fight for your freedom,' Boyle said.
The director of Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting also laced the show with snippets from British cinema, including the actor Daniel Craig as James Bond, and the spine-tingling soundtrack to Chariots Of Fire, which told the story of a Scotsman and an Englishman at the 1924 Paris Games.
Boyle's US$42 million show, with 15,000 volunteers, promised to take the expected global television audience of 1 billion on a rich and textured journey through British history.
His challenge was daunting: To be as memorable as Beijing's incredible, money-no-object opening ceremony of 2008, the costliest in Olympic history.
'Beijing is something that, in a way, was great to follow,' Boyle said. 'You can't get bigger than Beijing, you know? So that, in a way, kind of liberated us. We thought, 'Great, OK, good, we'll try and do something different.''
Boyle drew from Shakespeare, British pop culture, literature and music, and other sources of inspiration that will speak to - but perhaps at times baffle - not just Anglophiles but people across the globe.
It was Mr Rogge's last time as president of the International Olympic Committee to watch the Olympic flag being raised at an opening ceremony. He will step down in 2013 after completing the maximum two terms.
Besides the thousands of athletes and performers, 60,000 spectators were expected to pack Olympic Stadium.
Mr Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president, planned to attend the ceremony with his wife, Ann. Mr Romney caused a stir in Britain by suggesting earlier this week that the country had 'disconcerting' problems preparing for the games.
Other political leaders from around the world, United States first lady Michelle Obama and her daughters, and a sprinkling of European and celebrity royalty were also attending.
