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Louise Thomas
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Lady Gaga kicked off the Paris 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony on Friday (July 26) with what seemed like a dazzling live performance of Zizi Jeanmaire’s “Mon Truc en Plumes.”
However, at-home viewers might be surprised to learn that Gaga’s headlining act was actually pre-recorded. So, in-person attendees also watched the singer’s performance on a screen.
“We were in front of Lady Gaga’s set, and by the time the music started, the staircase was empty,” France 3’s journalist Yannick Le Gall, told The Telegraph, adding that “spectators booed and regretted having paid €180 to see nothing.”
According to Maud Le Pladec, the choreographer and head of dance for the Olympics, Gaga’s planned live performance was pulled after the weather made it “too dangerous” for performers.
“Unfortunately, it was the only [performance] that, for safety reasons, we had to pre-record late in the afternoon, once we knew for sure that it was going to rain – we had minute-by-minute updates, we had never watched the weather forecast so closely in our lives,” Pladec told Variety.
“We assessed that it was going to be too dangerous for performers, even with a few drops of rain. [Gaga] wanted to do it absolutely so we preferred to pre-record it rather than cancel it,” she explained.
“The soil would have been slippery. She was wearing heels, very near the water, there were stairs… We had to be extremely cautious.”
It’s reported that Gaga, too, stayed on-site and watched her musical number play on screen before heading back to her hotel.
The “Poker Face” singer, 38, later tweeted that she “wanted nothing more than to create a performance that would warm the heart of France, celebrate French art and music, and on such a momentous occasion remind everyone of one of the most magical cities on earth – Paris.”
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The rainy conditions not only affected Gaga’s performance, but also forced organizers to abandon the traditional stadium format to instead showcase the sights and sounds of the city, with athletes paraded along the Seine waterway.
Céline Dion closed out the four-plus hours-long opening ceremony with a stunning rendition of Edith Piaf’s “L’Hymne à l’amour” from the first stage on the Eiffel Tower.
The opening ceremony, which marked Dion’s first live performance since she announced she had been diagnosed with the rare, incurable neurological disorder Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS) in 2022, left critics unimpressed.
“Despite some silver linings, including a hotly-anticipated Céline Dion comeback, the cloudy ceremony was too much filler, too little killer,” Nick Hilton wrote in his two-star review for The Independent.
Follow The Independent’s Paris 2024 Olympics live blog here for real-time updates.
