Winter Olympics: Russia dazzles the world at Sochi Games opening ceremony

Maria Sharapova among the stars to carry the Olympic torch

Artists perform during the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, yesterday. Mark Humphrey / AP Photo

Agence France-Presse

SOCHI, Russia // A global audience was mesmerised last night by a Sochi Games opening ceremony that featured a feast of Russian music and a cast of thousands.

The theme was “Dreams of Russia”, with a young girl named Lyubov (love) guiding spectators at the packed Fisht Stadium on the Black Sea coast through thousands of years of Russian history.

With the mists clearing after a spectacular opening sequence in the roofed venue, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, looked on while a choir from the Sretensky Monastery sang the national anthem as the flag was raised by a group of Russian cosmonauts.

There was an early glitch when one of five illuminated snowflakes which were to morph into the five Olympic rings inside the arena, failed to open.

After the parade of nations, giant helium inflatables filled the stadium floor, surrounded by tumbling acrobats, with the balloons eventually becoming the onion domes, tent roofs and gables of St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.

Scores of dancers flooded the stage, with ballet stars bringing Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace to life, performing in an elaborate imperial ball.

A giant chugging steam train whistling and belching smoke entered the stadium suspended from the gantry as the story moved on to the events of the Russian Revolution of 1917, but the history lesson jumped over the blood-soaked reign of Joseph Stalin.

Key performers in the ceremony included the ballet dancer Diana Vishneva, the opera singer Anna Netrebko and the former WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev, who played the role of a giant but friendly Soviet policeman.

Maria Sharapova, the tennis star who once lived in Sochi, carried the Olympic torch into the stadium, and it was handed off to Yelena Isinbayeva and Alexander Karelin, Summer Games stars.

Two winter stars from the Soviet era, the skater Irina Rodnina and the ice hockey goalkeeper Vladislav Tretiak, took the flame on its final steps, outside the stadium and to the cauldron curving into the Russian sky.

Preparations for the 17-day extravaganza cost an estimated US$51 billion (Dh187.3bn) and came with a build-up plagued by political controversy and security fears.

Putin, who has been indelibly linked with the Games from bid to realisation, declared the showpiece on the shores of the Black Sea open.