Just for the record: the Oz Olympic music was phoney too

Published on Friday 29 August 2008 21:40

CHINA is not the only country to fake a musical performance during an Olympic opening ceremony. It turns out that Australia also knows a thing or two about miming music.

Eight years after Sydney hosted what was dubbed "the best Olympic Games ever", officials with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra acknowledged that their stirring performance at the 2000 opening ceremony was entirely pre-recorded.

And perhaps even more cringe-inducing for Sydneysiders: some of the music was recorded by the orchestra of Sydney's rival, Melbourne.

The disclosure of the mimed performance – which both orchestras have defended as a necessary pre-caution against embarrassing mistakes – 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, with her chubby face and crooked baby teeth, was not good-looking enough.

So the pigtailed and perky Lin Miaoke mouthed the words to Ode to the Motherland instead, in front of the 91,000 spectators at the National Stadium and television audiences globally.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra managing director Trevor Green confirmed today that the 2000 opening ceremony performance had been pre-recorded by both the Sydney and Melbourne orchestras, saying that such steps had to be taken to ensure mistakes were not made live during such high-profile events.

"If you've got an event the size of the Olympics, and you've got billions and billions of people watching it, you definitely have to have a backing track and mime to it, because anything could go wrong," Mr Green said.

"It is just a 'safety first' thing. You simply cannot take the risk."

The Sydney orchestra's decision to call on Melbourne for help was not surprising, given the workload, Mr Green added.

"It was just too much for one orchestra," he said. "We share artists all the time and conductors all the time."