The Winter Oympics opening ceremony arrived shrouded in mystery. There wasn’t a lot of advance publicity about what might happen, beyond a list of musical performers, heavier on popular classical names including Andrea Bocelli and Lang Lang than pop stars – and a quote from the event’s creative lead and executive producer, Marco Balich, that it would eschew “hi-tech and bling”.
Anyone desperate for intel might alight on a tabloid live stream that proffered the news that “it could last THREE hours” – it wasn’t entirely clear whether this was meant as enticement or warning – and a news report suggesting the International Olympic Committee were concerned that Team America might be booed, the legendary charm of the Trump administration having done so much to spread goodwill towards the US over the last 12 months. In fact, what the president of the IOC said was: “I hope that the opening ceremony is seen by everyone as an opportunity to be respectful of each other” – so there was always the chance she was concerned the crowd might take against Denmark, but it didn’t seem likely.
As it turned out, there were references to Roman mythology, 18th-century opera, Giorgio Armani and indeed to the work of a film director the BBC’s commentator referred to as Fredrick Fellinia. Plus, a lightning-fast approach to music that meant things moved fairly quickly from Verdi to giant-headed effigies of him, Puccini and Rossini dancing to the strains of Righeira’s 80s Italo disco hit Vamos a la playa; and to the oeuvre of the late Raffaella Carrà, best known in Britain for her 1978 novelty hit Do It Do It Again and its terrifying accompanying dance routine. (If you haven’t seen it, or can’t remember it, get yourself to YouTube and boggle that the poor woman wasn’t helped off the Top of the Pops stage in a neck brace.)
It could have been confusing, but luckily, the BBC’s commentary team were always on hand to let you know what was what. “Beauty – a way of life in Italy!” “That puffa coat is fascinating!” “Mariah Carey’s many, many fans out there shouldn’t go to the toilet!” There was some valuable context given, though, for an admirably highbrow segment of contemporary dance, about “how to keep a balance between human ambition and the natural world”, set to These New Puritans-style clattering percussion and neo-classical strings. Up in the stands, JD Vance was probably baffled.
For anyone unmoved by light classical music and not au fait with Italian pop (Laura Pausini, who has sold 40m albums without ever troubling the mass consciousness of the UK, sang Italy’s national anthem), Carey was the big draw, but was dispatched pretty early on in proceedings. Wearing sequins and a thousand-yard stare, she offered a slow-motion and relatively subdued – at least by Mariah Carey standards – reading of Volare (or rather, Nel blu, dipinito di blu, given that she sang it in Italian) before hitting an astonishing whistle note that indicated a segue into her recent single Nothing Is Impossible.
The live performances were bisected by the athlete’s parade – the American team ended up getting what the BBC tactfully described as “a mixed reception” – and resumed with a dance history of the Olympic Games. The 1960s and 70s were soundtracked by Adriano Celentano’s fabulous 1973 single Prisencolinensinainciusol, belatedly famed in the UK as the soundtrack to a TV advert for easyJet. From there on in, the musical entertainment was popular classical music all the way – Andrea Bocelli doing Nessun Dorma, Lang Lang accompanying Cecilia Bartoli – save for a brief appearance by the Italian rapper Ghali.
Largely unknown in the UK, Ghali sounds intriguing on paper – not least because he has a single called Pizza Kebab – but his performance was too subdued, too close to spoken word, to give you a real flavour of what he might be capable of. As the giant-headed effigies of opera composers took the stage once more, dancing to perky pop-dance as was the opera composer’s wont, I found myself wondering what the opening ceremony of the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028 might have in store. Given that Donald Trump will still be in power, we can probably look forward to Kid Rock.
