MILAN — Next Friday, the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics will kick off the Games at San Siro, Milan’s main soccer stadium.
Among the headliners: Mariah Carey and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
But the other stars will be the more than 1,200 volunteers who will perform that night.
Among them are tens of students at the academy at La Scala, Milan and Italy’s most prestigious opera house, who Wednesday morning practiced their choreography in a heated white tent, steps away from San Siro.
As they swirled and leaped on and off neon-lit cubicles, NBC News was told not to take photos of them dressed in costumes. “We want it to be a secret until the show,” said Federica Moscheni, communication manager at Balich Wonder Studio, the event management company behind a record 16 Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies.
Some of the volunteers are also professional actors and dancers, but the vast majority of them are amateurs who, for one night only, will perform in front of a live audience of 60,000 in the stadium, and the hundreds of millions expected to tune in from around the world.
Among them is Ariel Fuchs, from Chico, California.
“I have been working in Milan for a little over a year as a software engineer, met really good friends here who told me about the audition and told me to try it out and I got in, and it’s been great since then,” Fuchs, 25, told NBC NEWS.
“San Siro is such an incredible stadium. I went there to watch some soccer games, so to actually be on the field is such a crazy feeling, I am a little bit nervous but also really excited. We have all worked super hard, so I think it will all come together, no need for nerves but there is definitely some there.”
As the volunteers and dancers continued to rehearse their moves, in a corner of the white tent, tailors were working around the clock to make sure the dresses and props were ready.
And the numbers are staggering: 1,400 costumes, 1,500 pairs of shoes, 110 makeup artists and 70 hair stylists will be needed for the show, and 500 musicians composed the original soundtracks for the night.
“It is the biggest show on earth, bigger than anything else, bigger than the Super Bowl, than any other show ever seen,” said Lulu Helbeck, one of the show’s creative directors. “It’s gonna be seen in Africa, in America, in Europe, all generations, from the little boy in Taipei to the old lady in Ohio.”