This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/olympics-open-in-sochi-with-extravagant-pageant/2014/02/07/bba8a5e2-9011-11e3-b227-12a45d109e03_story.html?wprss=rss_world

The article has changed 9 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 5 Version 6
2014 Olympics launched in Sochi with extravagant Opening Ceremonies pageant 2014 Olympics launched in Sochi with extravagant Opening Ceremonies pageant
(about 2 hours later)
SOCHI, Russia — Before a crowd of 40,000, the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics kicked off Friday evening with the sweet voice of a little girl running through the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet. SOCHI, Russia — Glowing volcanoes, the planet’s oldest deepest lake, great forests of birch, galloping horses, Peter the Great, waltzing nobles, dazzling ballet, soaring opera, a cast of thousands and yes, even revolution. The Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies gathered the world into the great, chaotic, provocative embrace of Russian history Friday – and wouldn’t let go.
All told, more than 4,700 cast members will perform during the 150-minute extravaganza. After all the buzz over the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, organizers knew they had a high bar to clear. But the focus on the young girl at the beginning meant that the massive celebration opened on an intimate, whimsical note. The scale bordered on the colossal. If London on its modest isle would do buzz, Russia would do big — befitting the world’s largest country, twice the size of the United States. “Swan Lake”? Of course, with the swans turned into doves of peace released in honor of the Olympics and prima ballerina Diana Vishneva on stage. The Olympic hymn? Sung by diva Anna Netrebko.
One glitch, involving a giant snowflake, did little to mar the overall effect — and was quickly edited out of the Russian television broadcast. And the torch! Six former Olympic champions — including tennis player Maria Sharapova and rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, who has been rumored to be romantically linked to President Vladimir Putin — carried the flame past several thousand cheering performers and hundreds of volunteers.
Figure skater Irina Rodnina and Vladislav Tretiak, a former goaltender for the Soviet hockey team, bore it out of the stadium, across a plaza and to a small cauldron. They lowered the torch, and soon a burst of fire spread along a path to the big torch above them, which burst into flame.
Deeply thunderous fireworks resounded inside the stadium and without, and there was no doubt the Games had begun.
[See the latest Olympic updates here.][See the latest Olympic updates here.]
The theme at any Olympics is supposed to reflect the history of the host country. Russia has lived through more than its share of difficult moments, but Konstantin Ernst, who runs the national First Channel television company here and is the producer of the Opening Ceremonies, said he wanted to concentrate on Russia’s achievements — which are also legion. If London was pop, Sochi would be poetry — in motion. History was imparted in a feat of light, 132 projectors and 2.64 million lumens turning the floor of Fisht Olympic Stadium into a raging sea, bearing a boat where Peter the Great, the would-be navigator, was striding his way through history in seven-league boots.
So 11-year-old Liza Temnikova, playing a character named Lyubov, or Love, recited the name of a famous Russian person or event or invention for each letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. The first surprise of the evening may have come with the letter N, when she said, “Vladimir Nabokov” — the émigré novelist who made his life in America, wrote eventually in English and, as the author of “Lolita” — about an older man’s infatuation with a young girl — may not be considered by the straight-laced Kremlin to be among Russia’s most suitable writers. Every part of the program was written in the superlative. The triumphal national anthem was sung by the choir of the Sretensky Monastery, founded more than 600 years ago to celebrate Moscow’s escape from invasion by Tamerlane. The Olympic mascots — a snow leopard on a snowboard, a bear on ice skates, a rabbit on skis — would have dwarfed the balloons in a Macy’s parade.
More than 40 heads of state were expected to be in attendance. President Obama was not among them, but Ukraine’s beleaguered president, Viktor Yanukovych, was. The effect was majestic, and even subtle. Though a giant snowflake refused to morph into one of the Olympic rings, in a malfunction that Russian TV viewers never saw, the ingenuity awed foreigners. They saw a familiar if spectacularly executed emblem of Russia in the blazing-with-light troika flying in the air before them, pulling a fiery sun.
The ceremony is taking place in the Fisht Olympic Stadium — actually designed to be a soccer arena, and plenty roomy. Two huge truss arches, bowed out from each other, support a high, dark ceiling, almost 279 feet above the ground level, from which hang the cables that began to move immense props as the evening began. The biggest piece of scenery weighs more than five tons. Russians were surrounded with cultural touchstones. The 19th-century writer Nikolai Gogol had burned the troika into every Russian heart in “Dead Souls,” comparing it to their nation: “the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.”
The first scene imagined Lyubov asleep and dreaming, then grabbing the tail of a kite and being lifted far off the stage. Seven “islands” representing the variety of Russia’s vast topography — everything from an Arctic village to a birch forest to a volcano — floated past her in the air. The empire flowered. Peter’s epauletted, gray-clad soldiers marched in smart formation before turning into graceful waltzing gentry in a scene out of “War and Peace,” “Natasha Rostova’s First Ball.”
Giant snowflakes emerged and slowly transformed into the five Olympic rings — except that one refused to open. Russian television, equipped with a backup recording from Tuesday’s dress rehearsal, didn’t broadcast the malfunction. Spectators gasped as 14 marbleized columns rose out of the floor high up toward the ceiling. Liveried footmen held candelabra. This was the era that nurtured ballet, and modern stars, including Svetlana Zakharova and Vladimir Vasiliev, danced in celebration, a scene within a scene.
Music by Alexander Borodin’s “Prince Igor” accompanied the scene. Ernst said music throughout the program will lean heavily on the Russian classics, with a mash-up of pop tunes interspersed. The tempo quickened, the columns disappeared, the dancers huddled together, bending and swaying, arms stretched upward in despair. Snow fell, darkness descended, interrupted by frenetic streaks of light. The dancers fled, or died.
“Unfortunately, unlike London, we cannot boast of a plethora of popular performers known around the world,” he said. So Modest Mussorgsky and Pyotr Tchaikovsky would have to do. And the revolution! The 40,000 spectators found themselves in the middle of a painting by Kazimir Malevich, the influential avant-garde artist of the early 20th century. First, a streamlined locomotive traveled through the air, suspended on cables from the vaulted ceiling, accompanied by a red circle, cones and geometic objects, painted blood-red.
The parade of athletes from each unfolded to faster-tempo music,to keep the process moving along. Most teams were in colorful but sensible winter sports outfits. The Bermudans, though, came in blue blazers and bright red Bermuda shorts. The Cayman Islands athletes did them one better — shorts and flip-flops. The Brits wore “Fargo”-style fur police hats. Then workers, garbed in Malevich red and black, marched, pursued by towering machinery in muted red — the luster of idealism had worn off. The workers hurried, bent and twisted, but got caught up in gears and wheels so huge they made the people around them small and insignificant. Soon they were nothing but cogs.
Each team was accompanied by a Russian model dressed in white. The one assigned to Iran stood out: Unlike the others, she wore a full-length dress. “You know that Russian avant-garde art and the Russian Revolution are very close, they go hand in hand,” said Konstantin Ernst, the head of Russian’s Channel One television and the ceremony’s producer. “In fact, avant-garde art predicted the revolution in a way, and the revolution killed avant-garde art.”
Still ahead was the usual collection of speeches and the lighting of the Olympic torch. A dramatic effect was in the works for that, but Ernst wasn’t saying ahead of time. “This is the biggest secret ever,” he said in English, and shrugged. It was an unflinching look at the Soviet system, absent of nostalgia or shame, viewed through the artistic vision of one of its victims.
The history pageant included 18 episodes. Ernst called them “simple, straightforward” metaphors. The painting breaks apart, drifting away. Skyscrapers rise on panels and huge familiar sculptured heads drift toward each other and pass, vacant-eyed. They are the worker — disembodied hand carrying his hammer — and peasant woman — disembodied hand holding a scythe — built for the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris.
Following the parade of athletes, they resumed with a medieval scene – featuring large inflated characters and onion domes, brightly painted in the style of traditional Russian “dymki,” or clay figurines. No mention of Stalin or terror; the emphasis, Ernst said, was on achievement.
Peter the Great sailed in, destined for St. Petersburg in his seven-league boots. Then came the 1960s, and a period remembered fondly by many adult Russians today. Men triumphantly carried red jets, then white rockets. The name of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, illuminated the floor. Buildings rose; actual old Soviet cars drove down the middle of the stage.
His epauletted, gray-clad soldiers marched here and there and then, in a wink, became graceful waltzing gentry at “Natasha Rostova’s First Ball,” in a scene named for a character in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” A frenetic but cheerful dance went from students to hipsters to lovers to weddings to kids. It ended with a nod to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, with runners and the games’ theme music from 34 years ago.
Russians today have a particular nostalgia for the 19th century, when everything seemed more cultured, noble and sophisticated (if you weren’t a serf, that is). At court, everyone spoke French. This is when ballet took hold here. Now it’s as deeply associated with Russia as vodka or caviar. The scene, on the big Sochi stage, featured some of Russia’s pre-eminent ballet stars. including Svetlana Zakharova and Vladimir Vasiliev. The ceremony took place in the Fisht Olympic Stadium — designed to be a soccer arena, and plenty roomy. Two huge truss arches, bowed out from each other, support a high, dark ceiling, almost 279 feet above the ground level, from which hung the cables that began to move immense props as the evening began. The biggest piece of scenery weighs more than five tons. Nearly 10,000 people helped stage it; 19,000 safety pins were used.
To discordant music, the scene ended with the nobility falling as if dead, then fleeing. The athletes marched up from an underground ramp, the Earth and their home countries projected around them. U.S. athletes got warm applause. Ukrainians — who have been rising against their authoritarian leaders — were cheered. And Russia? The crowd went crazy.
Thus began the 20th century. The pageant took the form of a dream by a young girl named Lyuba, played by 11-year-old Liza Temnikova. She reaches out and grabs for a kite tail, which pulls her up into a sky holding all of Russia’s immensity and contradictions.
A giant locomotive was hauled in slowly through the air, followed by trusses, beams and a huge cone. The music, “Time Forward,” was for years the theme song of Soviet news programs. Red predominated. Islands with birch forests and Arctic villages stream past her. Inflated characters from folk tales gather a congregation of cheery onion domes that float away. Lyuba had begun by reciting the alphabet, attaching a famous Russian name or achievement to each. Dostoevsky, Catherine the Great, Sputnik, the periodic table, Nabokov — a suprising acknowledgment of an émigré novelist.
The inspiration was Kazimir Malevich, an outstanding artist of the 1910s and 1920s, and a founder of the Suprematist movement. Huge tractors, giant gears and cogs rolled onto the stage, people as parts within them. The program would end to the strains of “The Nutcracker.” Ah, Tchaikovsky! No one mentioned he was gay.
It was a commentary on life in the early Soviet days. Ernst said that the Bolshevik Revolution was a topic that couldn’t be avoided, but that he wanted to approach it through the world of art. Natasha Abbakumova contributed to this article.
“The avant-garde predicted the revolution, and the revolution killed the avant-garde,” he said.
Then came the 1960s, and a period remembered fondly by many adult Russians today. Men triumphantly carried red jets, then white rockets. The name of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, illuminated the floor. Buildings arose, actual old Soviet cars drove down the middle of the stage. A frenetic but cheerful dance went from Students, to Hipsters, to Lovers, to Weddings, to Kids. It ended with a nod to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, with runners and the Games’ theme music from 34 years ago.
At 10:25, Putin declared the Games open.
And to launch the conclusion – what else? – an excerpt from Swan Lake, by Tchaikovsky, the lead danced by Diana Vishneva. But instead of tutus, the dancers sported illuminated tendrils, like those of an especially beautiful jellyfish, that they spun to create an effect like that of a flock of white doves.
Anna Netrebko, the opera singer, sang the Olympic Hymn.
Finally, a succession of six torch bearers, all former Russian Olympic champions – one of whom, the rhythmic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, has been rumored to be romantically linked to Putin, while another is now a parliamentary deputy from the ruling United Russia party — carried the Olympic flame past 2,000 cheering volunteers, out of the stadium, across a plaza, and to a small cauldron. They lowered the flame to it, and soon a burst of fire spread to the big torch above them. It was 10:54. Music from “The Nutcracker” was accompanied by deeply thunderous fireworks.