The Paris Olympics officially opened Friday night with a sprawling, grandiose opening ceremony that delivered on the promise to send athletes down the River Seine and culminated in the stirring return of Celine Dion, who sang from the Eiffel Tower in her first performance in two years.
A party-like atmosphere was ignited from the second former French soccer great Zinedine Zidane appeared in a taped segment to start the night, and not even a steady downpour could douse the flames of enthusiasm as the Games made a splashy return to Paris for the first time since 1924.
The mood was in contrast to earlier in the day, when the nation’s high-speed rail system was disrupted by apparently coordinated arson attacks.