Olympics Opening Ceremony Offers Fanfare for a Reinvented Russia --- SOCHI, Russia — With an outsize extravaganza that reached deep into the repertory of classical music and ballet, traversed the sights and sounds of the world’s largest geopolitical expanse, soared into outer space and swept across millenniums of history in a celebration of everything from czarist military might to Soviet monumentalism, a swaggering, resurgent Russia turned its Winter Olympic aspirations into reality on Friday night. -- After seven years of building to this moment — the opening of what is believed to be the most expensive Olympic Games in history — the message of the over-the-top ceremony was simply this: In a big way, Russia is back. -- The 18-chapter, nearly three-hour opening ceremony began at the symbolic moment of 8:14 p.m. — 20:14, as time is counted here — and provided a majestic spectacle that included a glowing troika of horses made of light streaking through a snowbound sky, the multicolor onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral bobbing in the air; literary references to Gogol, Tolstoy and Nabokov; images of Stalinist skyscrapers; and performances by Russia’s storied ballerinas, musicians and singers. - More, NYTimes