However, puzzled online viewers questioned why Carey, who is not Italian, was selected to perform it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Mariah but they should have had one of our own singing this like Andrea Bocelli,\u201d one wrote, adding that the song had \u201cdeep meaning\u201d for Italians.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel bad. Why did they make her sing an Italian song anyways she did her best,\u201d wrote another.<\/p>\n
The Express Tribune reported viewers complained her pronunciation was uncertain and distracting, saying it undermined the gravitas of the ceremony, which had been envisioned as a celebration of Italian culture.<\/p>\n
Mariah Carey was roasted online for reading phonetically spelled Italian lyrics to Nel blu, dipinto di blu.<\/p>\n
Viewers also noted the 56-year-old\u2019s lack of energy during the performance, as she segued into Nothing Is Impossible from her 2025 album Here For It All.<\/p>\n
Multiple commenters accused the self-appointed \u201cQueen of Christmas\u201d of lip-syncing.<\/p>\n
Event director Maria Laura Iascone said Carey did pre-record her songs but did not confirm whether she used the recordings on the night, according to the Guardian.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring all the ceremonies, in order to be on the safe side, we always record,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut this is something that is practised internationally in events with high-level broadcasting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mariah Carey was accused of lip-syncing at the 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen was the last time Mariah Carey didn\u2019t lip sync a performance,\u201d one X (formerly Twitter) user asked, noting they would have preferred an artist who could have delivered a more \u201cauthentic\u201d performance.<\/p>\n
Another person said her obvious lip-syncing \u201cruined what has been a decent opening ceremony thus far\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a separate Carey-related controversy, Italian journalists covering the games went on strike after the ceremony, after a senior commentator made embarrassing blunders in his coverage, Indy100 reported.<\/p>\n
RaiSport reporters announced they would protest after Paolo Petrecca welcomed viewers to Stadio Olimpico, a sporting venue in Rome, even though he was standing inside the San Siro.<\/p>\n
Later in the broadcast, Petrecca announced \u201cThe show continues with Mariah Carey\u201d, however, the camera was focused on Italian actress Matilda De Angelis, who is 25 years younger than Carey.<\/p>\n
De Angelis later joked about the error in an Instagram post, which she captioned \u201cPlease, call me Mariah\u201d.<\/p>\n
RaiSport confirmed Petrecca had been removed from the commentary team, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, puzzled online viewers questioned why Carey, who is not Italian, was selected to perform it. \u201cI love…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[9490,1929,64,63,22806,21677,142516,84136,90544,241144,15454,134,580,5587,80143,46815,34782,136,10018,445,59907,6342,241142,7994,241145,137177,241143,27044,16962],"class_list":["post-472768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-after","tag-at","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-been","tag-being","tag-carey","tag-ceremony","tag-criticised","tag-diva","tag-during","tag-entertainment","tag-for","tag-from","tag-italian","tag-lyrics","tag-mariah","tag-music","tag-olympics","tag-online","tag-opening","tag-performance","tag-phonetic","tag-reading","tag-roasted","tag-spotted","tag-teleprompter","tag-using","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}