Raymond J. de Souza: Where was America 250’s celebratory spectacle?

A young Trump supporter watches a fireworks display during the America 250 celebration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the early morning hours of July 5, 2026. Fr. Raymond de Souza writes that the semiquincentennial events were underwhelming, and the World Cup, while exciting, also lacked spectacle. Photo by Alex WROBLEWSKI / AFP via Getty Images

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Canadians could well have told our American friends that their semiquincentennial would be underwhelming, if not a flop.

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At our sesquicentennial back in 2017, we discovered our lost sense of celebratory spectacle. With the political left trumpeting the entire Canadian project to be a criminal enterprise, if not genocidal, and the political right promoting the idea that the left had irreparably broken the country, the fonts of patriotic fervour were running dry. Canada 150 came and went with rather less than the occasion deserved, especially compared to the centennial in 1967, when Expo ’67 in Montreal marked a months-long festival of Canadian achievement and confidence in the future. It was a long way down over 50 years.

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The Americans did something similar at their Centennial Exposition, a world’s fair in Philadelphia in 1876. It showcased American technological progress, including the typewriter, sewing machine, a 1,400-horsepower steam engine and the telephone of Scots-Canadian-American Alexander Graham Bell.

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The French caught the same spirit for the centennial of the French Revolution in 1889, constructing the Eiffel Tower. Three years earlier they had sent the Statue of Liberty to New York, a gift for the 1876 centennial, though installed in 1886.

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The American bicentennial in 1976 — at a time of economic crisis, political disgrace and the dishonour of Vietnam — was a rousing commemoration with tall ships in New York harbour, Queen Elizabeth II bringing a new bell to Philadelphia, and Rocky Balboa going the distance against Apollo Creed on the big screen. The “bicentennial minutes” on CBS knitted together towns and cities across the land, all of which had their own local festivals.

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America 250 instead featured the president imagining himself on Mount Rushmore, and a third-rate state fair on the Washington Mall featuring fourth-rate singers, adjacent to an algae-blooming, paint-peeling, dodgy-contracting pool that does reflect something of America’s moment. It is a long way down over 50 years.

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At the bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989, a grand concert at the Place de la Concorde concluded with the incomparable soprano Jessye Norman singing La Marseillaise in an immense tricolore gown that seemed to billow out over the broad avenues of Paris. That was a spectacle.

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A year later at the World Cup in Italy, there was the inspired decision to use Puccini’s Nessun Dorma — no one sleeps! — as the BBC title sequence for its coverage. Operatic tenors for football? It was pure cultural genius, as the closing verses, sung by Luciano Pavarotti, soared: all’alba vincerò! At dawn, I shall win!

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Plácido Domingo and José Carreras joined Pavarotti at the ancient ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, on the eve of the World Cup final, for the first “Three Tenors” concert, a performance that had greater impact than the World Cup itself. It was a spectacle in the Eternal City, where public spectacles have been offered for millennia, for good and ill.

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Pavarotti would sing publicly for the last time to conclude the opening ceremonies of the Turin Olympics in 2006, marrying opera and sport again. He would die the following year, his final Nessun Dorma closing with the world’s largest curtain drawing down upon him, fireworks to follow.