Pavarotti Lipsynched Last Performance

Lipsynching isn't just for neophytes like Nikki Hilton—none other than tenor Luciano Pavarotti faked his way through his final public performance at the opening of the Turin Winter Olympics, the Guardian reports. In a new book, Pavarotti's conductor and pianist claims that he recorded the cancer-stricken tenor and the orchestra, and used video trickery to pull the ruse off before millions of TV viewers.

Pavarotti, who died of pancreatic cancer last fall, was too sick to face a live show, so Leone Magiera recorded the aria in Pavarotti's home. Even then, once done, "he collapsed on his wheelchair, exhausted," writes Magiera. He had everybody fooled: "Knowing when to cut off that final high note to match a tape would be next to impossible ... It's live," wrote a fan on YouTube. (More classical music stories.)