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Sydney Olympics faked part of their opening ceremony too

by Rob Peters | August 29, 2008 at 08:46 am

2220 views | 11 Recommendations | 4 comments

Directors involved with the 2000 Sydney Olympics admit that part of their opening ceremony was faked. Apparently the performance by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was entirely prerecorded, and not even by the host city's orchestra. Parts were recorded by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Does this mean Vancouver will ask Calgary Philharmonic to record ours for 2010?

China isn't the only country to fake a musical performance during an Olympic opening ceremony. Turns out Australia knows a thing about miming music, too.

Eight years after Sydney hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics, officials with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra acknowledged their stirring performance at the opening ceremony was entirely prerecorded. And perhaps even more cringe-inducing for Sydney residents: some of the music was recorded by the symphony of rival city Melbourne.

The revelation followed an international uproar over China's decision to pass off the voice of a seven-year-old singer as that of another girl at this year's Olympic opening ceremony.

The Beijing ceremony's chief music director said the real singer, Yang Peiyi, wasn't good looking enough. So the pigtailed and perky Lin Miaoke mouthed the words to Ode to the Motherland instead at the ceremony.

Trevor Green, managing director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO), confirmed on Friday that the 2000 opening ceremony performance had been prerecorded by both the Sydney and Melbourne orchestras, saying that steps must be taken to ensure mistakes aren't made live during high-profile events.

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mchawk

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 16:48 on August 29th, 2008

Rob Peters, I like this story. It's good stuff.

I'm still not sure why there's been such a furore over the opening ceremony fakery. If audiences were to boycott artists that mime over the recordings of others, then many chart-toppers would never tour.

The Opening Ceremony was awesome - nomatter how they did it.

Uwe Paschen

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 02:05 on August 31st, 2008

Rob Peters, I like this story. It's good stuff.

I am still convinced would all this have happened in LA or Sidney or Vancouver no one would have made a fuss about it, yet because it was China and they did an outstanding job and put many to shame we just had to blow it all out of proportion trying to make them look bad. Are we going to do the same with the para Olympics?

kan (not verified)

at 18:34 on September 1st, 2008

ALL FAKE.
1992 Olympic - arrow shot - FAKE
2000 - Sydney Olympic - Symphony's - FAKE
2006 Winter Olympic - Pavarotti - Lip Sync

Hypocrite!!!!
Where is the outrage???????
When the Westerner did it, it is OK, but not the Chinese.
All are just "China Bashing"!

Pavarotti lip-synched in the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics at
Torino, Italy.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/story/2008/08/12/olympics-lipsynch.html?ref=rss

Also, that arrow shot that started the Olympic flame at Barcelona actually
missed; the flame was lit by mechanical means. All "fake".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics2000/926190.stm

Billions of people around the globe gasped in admiration as the archer bravely found his target with unerring accuracy.

Spot-kick misery for Diana Ross
Or so it seemed.
In reality, he had not actually landed the arrow in the middle of the cauldron - he had fired it way outside the stadium as instructed.
Organisers dared not risk his aim failling short and landing into the grandstand and instead told him to fire it directly over the target area... some pyrotechnics-helpful camera angles would take care of the visual effect.