Spectacular suspended piano steals show at Paris Olympics Closing Ceremony

12 August 2024, 10:24

A gravity-defying instrument accompanied a star French tenor as part of the conclusion of the Olympic Games at Paris’ Stade de France.

Rumours had been circulating all weekend that movie star Tom Cruise would be performing an acrobatic stunt at the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

But Hollywood was upstaged by a grand piano in the stunt stakes.

Swiss pianist and composer Alain Roche has created huge interest in his vertical piano performances, where he plays while his instrument is suspended in an unusual position from great height. During Sunday night’s event, his piano was dramatically suspended within Paris’ mighty Stade de France.

With star French tenor Benjamin Bernheim, Roche performed a new version of Gabriel Fauré’s Hymne à Apollon.

Roche told Classic FM after the ceremony that it was an “incredible” experience.

Read more: What music is at the Paris 2024 Olympics Closing Ceremony and who are the musicians?

“It’s so special to be in the middle of all this energy, all this adrenaline ... in a stadium with 70,000 people with a moment of suspense for such a poetic piece as the ‘Hymn to Apollo’,” Roche said (translated from French).

“I launched the ‘vertical piano’ project 11 years ago, because I was trying to challenge expectations, to reverse the way things are seen. The piano is my instrument, and I decided that by reversing it, you can see things differently.”

39-year-old Bernheim is a rising star of the opera world. Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper has said that he has “the most beautiful tenor voice since Luciano Pavarotti”.

Fauré’s composition was based on hymn texts that had been discovered in Athens in the late 19th century. The song was presented at the founding congress’ first Olympic Congress in Paris in 1894, when congress were on the hunt for an anthem for their modern Olympic games.

The work has been arranged anew for this performance 130 years later.

The music of the Paris 2024 Olympic ceremonies has been characterised by classic meets modern, with music director Victor le Masne proudly blending his classical loves with his synth-pop roots. He told us to expect the unexpected and that’s what was delivered.

Sunday night’s performance, with a beautiful tenor voice and a spectacular suspended piano, will not be soon forgotten.