Europe’s largest bell will ring to start a £27m Olympic opening ceremony inspired by Shakespeare and featuring nurses and around 900 local school pupils.

A billion people are expected to watch the opening ceremony on 27 July.

Billy Elliot director Steven Daldry, London 2012’s director of ceremonies, said the task of putting on “the greatest shows on Earth” was like producing 165 West End musicals at the same time.

The stadium’s 27-tonne bell is being cast this week at London’s Whitechapel Foundry – where 13.5-tonne Big Ben was cast in 1856 – and will be engraved with a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest play: “Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises”.

The bell will hang at one end of the stadium and organisers say they want people to hear it “for hundreds of years”.

Before the opening ceremony kicks off on 27 July at 21:00, with the tolling of the bell, an Olympic Stadium packed with 80,000 spectators will be entertained by a pre-show that will start at 12 minutes past eight – at exactly 20:12.