(Repeats with no change to text)
* Opening ceremony divides world opinion
* Many viewers perplexed by "Britishness"
* Director Danny Boyle celebrated home nation
* Show drew large TV audience in Britain
LONDON, July 28 (Reuters) - "Strange", "baffling" and
"surreal" was how director Danny Boyle described his Olympic
opening ceremony. The rest of the world largely agreed.
In the press stands of the arena where the ceremony took
place on Friday night, Chinese journalists looked puzzled and
asked their English peers for guidance as they struggled to make
sense of the artistic whirlwind for their readers back home.
Reaction to the $42 million showcase event at the main
Olympic stadium and across Britain, which is hosting the 2012
Games, was overwhelmingly positive.
But the plain-talking Boyle, who won an Oscar for "Slumdog
Millionaire", will not be remotely surprised to hear that "Isles
of Wonder", a kaleidoscopic canter through Britain's past, left
many viewers scratching their heads.
Boyle was braced for bewilderment even ahead of the
four-hour ceremony inspired by Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and
packed with references to British history, literature and music.
The opening minutes of the ceremony "you might find a bit
strange and baffling", he told reporters from dozens of
countries before the show. The second half, he warned, would be
"actually slightly surreal; some of you will be baffled, I can
guarantee it".
So wide was the cultural divide for some that Spain's
centre-right daily El Mundo pondered: "Are we of the same
species as the Brits?"
But underlining how sharply divided opinions have been to
the London 2012 opening, other Spanish newspapers were full of
praise.
QUEEN, BOND AND BEAN
Quintessentially British, the ceremony opened with a
re-creation of bucolic bliss, referencing William Blake's "green
and pleasant lands", before turning dark and recreating the
"dark Satanic mills" of industrialisation.
William Shakespeare and John Milton made way for Ian
Fleming, Lewis Carroll and J.K. Rowling, while Elgar, Handel and
Parry were drowned out by the Clash and the Sex Pistols.
Comedy character Mr. Bean crashed the London Symphony
Orchestra's party, while James Bond, played by Daniel Craig,
joined Queen Elizabeth in a short, tongue-in-cheek video.
"The opening of the London Olympic Games reminded us that
heart and passion are just as important as proficiency and
technique!" Nigel Lythgoe, producer of "American Idol" and a
Briton working full-time in Hollywood, said.
"As long as the games exist, Her Majesty the Queen
Elizabeth's entrance with James Bond will always be remembered.
Steeped in history and tradition the opening ceremony made me
extremely proud to be British."
Many of the characters in the show resonate well beyond home
shores, but the combination was too parochial for some.
"Of course it was a very British ceremony and it had to be
like that, but for me it lacked a certain universality," Hansel
Cereza, a Spanish actor and artistic director responsible for
choreography at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, said.
Others agreed with Boyle - the point of the show was to
portray what it is to be British.
"There has to be an element of the home team showing off
what they're all about," said Salman Dadobhoy, a businessman
from Islamabad.
From Germany, where sporting rivalry with Britain is keenly
felt after crunch clashes at major soccer tournaments in recent
decades, there was plenty of friendly feedback.
The Bild tabloid called it "an opening ceremony with lots of
goose-bump moments, and a big dose of British humour. Thank you!
That was great, Britain."
BEIJING COMPARISONS
Comparisons with the last Summer Games were inevitable,
given that Boyle worked with a budget of well under half the
estimated cost of the Beijing opener and created a show that was
chaotic and more personalised.
"If Zhang Yimou's dazzling Beijing opening in 2008 was about
automaton-like synchronicity and majestic spectacle, Boyle's
epic opera of social and cultural history was a vibrant work of
unfettered imagination that celebrated a nation, but even more
so, its people," wrote David Rooney of the Hollywood Reporter.
Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, an outspoken critic of
the authorities, called the ceremony "brilliant", singling out a
section dedicated to Britain's National Health Service (NHS)
welfare system and children's literature.
"A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy,"
he wrote in the Guardian newspaper.
Boyle argued that the memorable scale and precision of
Beijing had in fact been helpful.
"There has to be a modesty about it. You can't get grandiose
with this job because you're following Beijing," he said.
"The shows get bigger and bigger and bigger and you can't
get bigger than Beijing, so that in a way kind of liberated us."
"SHOULDERS OF GIANTS"
For a director from working class roots who broke through
with "Trainspotting", a film about down-and-out drug addicts in
Scotland, Boyle has travelled a long way to take charge of one
of the world's most prestigious events.
His mischievous spirit and ideals shone through, with the
Sex Pistols blaring while Her Majesty looked on and the ode to
the NHS seemingly a warning to cost-cutting politicians not to
meddle with the cherished service.
Yet the establishment was also there - soccer player David
Beckham and former Beatle Paul McCartney played major roles, and
even Queen Elizabeth, the fiercely private 86-year-old monarch,
joined the party with her film debut, albeit a brief one.
Nearly 27 million Britons watched the opening ceremony,
eclipsing last year's royal wedding between Prince William and
Kate Middleton, and 19 million were still tuned in well after
midnight when the cauldron was lit.
"It's all very British but as a spectacle it stands," said
commentator Inge Van Meensel for Dutch language broadcaster VRT.
"Danny Boyle said he wanted to stand on the shoulders of
giants. After tonight he will be a giant too."
(Additional reporting by Jill Serjeant and Bob Tourtellotte in
Los Angeles, Christine Kearney in New York, Alexandria Sage in
Paris, Asma Alsharif in Jeddah, Ed Stoddard in Pretoria,
Andjarsari Paramaditha in Jakarta, Iain Rogers and Julien Toyer
in Madrid, Alexandra Hudson in Berlin, Georgina Prodhan in
Vienna, Lefteris Papadimas in Athens, Barbara Lewis in Brussels,
George Obulutsa in Nairobi, Anam Zehra in Islamabad, Thomas
Escritt in Amsterdam, Sabrina Mao in Beijing and Teppei Kasai in
Tokyo; Editing by Peter Millership and Alison Williams)