Disco-dancing opera masters upstage Mariah Carey at Winter opening
The 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”.
References ranged from Roman mythology and 18th-century opera to Giorgio Armani and a film director the BBC’s commentator called Fredrick Fellinia. A lightning-fast approach to music moved things from Verdi to giant-headed effigies of him, Puccini and Rossini dancing to Righeira’s 80s Italo disco hit Vamos a la playa, and to the oeuvre of Raffaella Carrà, best known in Britain for Do It Do It Again and its terrifying accompanying dance routine.
Britain