Hallelujah Chorus

The Hallelujah Chorus is the climactic musical number in the Berlin Olympic opening ceremony, where a choir of thousands and the spectators unite in song. Its place at the ceremony’s close gives the performance a role beyond musical display: it helps transform a sequence of carefully staged effects into a powerful impression of collective feeling.

Performance in the Ceremony

As the sun began to decline behind the Olympic flame, a choir of thousands dressed in white rose together and began singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. The placement linked the music to the ceremony’s central image of the flame, while the choir’s coordinated rise made the song a mass performance rather than a solo or small-ensemble interlude.

Audience and Effect

The spectators stood and joined the singers. The music and voices swelled and melded through the stadium, filling its vast interior with an atmosphere the narration describes as light, love, and joy. The response made the audience part of the scene: the ceremony’s emotional force came not only from what was performed, but from the crowd’s participation.

Narrative Significance

The chorus provides the ceremony with an emotionally charged culmination. The wider spectacle was carefully crafted to give spectators a grand feeling and to begin shaping international opinion of the new Germany. The song’s massed voices and the crowd’s response belong to that larger effect, presenting a moment of apparent unity at the close of an event designed to impress audiences at home and abroad.