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When Madonna stepped out onto the mammoth stage constructed on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Seaside on Saturday night time in a gleaming halo headpiece and black kimono, she was greeted by the biggest stay crowd of her four-decade profession.
The free present, introduced in late March, was a grand finale to the pop famous person’s newest world tour, which has delivered 80 performances since final October. With out ticket information, live performance crowd sizes will be tough to gauge; Riotur, the municipality’s tourism division, estimated that 1.6 million folks flooded onto the two.4-mile stretch of sand on Saturday that had been become a roughly $12 million playground surrounding the 8,700-square-foot stage.
It was the end result of days of Madonna-mania within the metropolis, the place discuss of the singer, 65, was inescapable. Her songs spilled out of shops and automotive stereos. Followers assembled exterior her lodge and shouted her identify. Updates in regards to the live performance, which was broadcast on the community Globo TV, dominated native media reviews.
The spectacle in Rio was a milestone in Madonna’s profession: the victory lap for her first stage retrospective, referred to as the Celebration Tour, by which she chronicled her rise to stardom, performing hits like “Into the Groove,” “Like a Prayer” and “Ray of Mild” with a cadre of dancers, 4 of her six kids, and a wardrobe of elaborate costuming that recalled a few of her most memorable appears.
“Right here we’re, essentially the most lovely place on this planet,” Madonna introduced early within the live performance, indicating the ocean and the mountains round her. “That is magic.” Later, she expounded on her gratitude for her Brazilian followers. “You might have all the time been there for me,” she stated. “That flag: that green-and-yellow flag, I see it in every single place. I really feel it in my coronary heart.”
The 2-plus-hour Rio present hewed intently to the Celebration present, with a number of exceptions: Madonna added her 2000 observe “Music” to the set checklist, rearranged as a samba with stay drummers and a particular visitor, the Brazilian drag star Pabllo Vittar. “Reside to Inform,” staged as a tribute to victims of AIDS, included pictures of the Brazilian musicians Cazuza and Renato Russo, and the actress Sandra Bréa. For “Vogue,” Madonna appeared in a glittery costume within the colours of the Brazilian flag and was joined by the pop sensation Anitta, who helped “decide” the opponents strutting down the runway.
The present had lifelong Madonna followers — a lot of whom got here wearing homage to their heroine in cone bras and lace gloves — screaming and dancing alongside. Ernesto Magalhães, 42, adorned within the type of Madonna’s “Materials Lady” period in a robe and boa whereas balancing on stilts, epitomized the exuberant spirit of the event: “I’ve been a Madonna fan since I used to be 8; I couldn’t miss this.” Surya Rossi, a 31-year-old illustrator, selected a last-minute journey from Rio Claro, São Paulo, after coordinating together with her cousin, and stayed with buddies. “Madonna has been an incredible affect on me, each as a feminist and an artist,” she stated. “Her empowering historical past and strategy encourage me.”
It was additionally one thing of a landmark second for stay concert events globally. At a time of astronomical ticket costs and rising manufacturing prices for main reveals, a free live performance attracting a crowd of this scale is exceedingly uncommon, particularly in america. California’s Coachella pageant, the place a three-day basic admission go begins at about $500, attracts as much as 125,000 attendees a day. Musikfest, a largely free music pageant in Pennsylvania, welcomed about 1.3 million guests over 11 days final yr.
“To have a free present like that in recent times is comparatively unheard-of,” Katelyn Yount, the director of festivals at AEG Presents, stated of Madonna’s closing present. Hangout, an upcoming music pageant on Alabama’s Gulf Coast that’s among the many annual occasions AEG produces, is capped every day at about 40,000 attendees, who pay greater than $300 for a three-day go.
If a efficiency of this magnitude was going to be held wherever in 2024, it could in all probability be in Rio, the place officers have expertise with huge crowds. In 2006, about 1.5 million folks attended a free Rolling Stones live performance at Copacabana Seaside, Brazilian police and different authorities stated on the time. A good bigger crowd was stated to have gathered for a Rod Stewart present there on New 12 months’s Eve in 1994.
The concept for the sprawling occasion was first planted two years in the past, when Luiz Guilherme Niemeyer, an government with Bonus Observe, a stay leisure firm based mostly in Rio de Janeiro, approached Madonna’s managers after listening to about plans for the tour. The Rolling Stones live performance in 2006 helped persuade him that one thing like this was doable, he stated.
Negotiations stalled till final yr, when a Madonna present in Mexico Metropolis was introduced — ticketed dates for the Celebration Tour ended up wrapping with 5 nights there on the Palacio de los Deportes — and Niemeyer resumed his efforts to persuade the pop star’s representatives and safe funding.
“It was an bold mission for everybody, aiming to draw the biggest viewers of her profession, and I assumed this may assist me persuade her,” Niemeyer stated in an interview final week.
The live performance’s company backers embrace the Brazilian financial institution Itaú and Heineken, and the federal government has made a big funding as properly.
Preparation for Madonna-palooza had consumed a phase of town in current days. Every week in the past, cargo planes carried about 270 tons of live performance materials to town, together with costumes and gymnasium gear. Eighteen sound and video towers had been constructed throughout the seashore, and final Wednesday, 4,000 staff ready the stage in scorching warmth.
As a result of this was the one Celebration live performance in South America — Madonna final toured there in 2012 — followers congregated from everywhere in the continent. Within the days main as much as the occasion, a Madonna impersonator, Izelene Cristina, danced to “La Isla Bonita” at a bus station as she welcomed vacationers. She wouldn’t be attending the live performance as a result of pleasure over the famous person’s efficiency had led to a flood of bookings.
“Such is the lifetime of an artist,” she stated. “You’re employed to maneuver and entertain folks.”
On Monday, Madonna and her touring workforce of about 200 arrived in Rio, heading on to the French Riviera-inspired Copacabana Palace, the posh lodge close to the place the stage was constructed. Later within the week, crowds gathered as near the stage as doable, because the pop star crossed a specifically constructed footbridge from the lodge to the stage to rehearse with a few of her dancers.
Social media was flooded with clips of Madonna operating by songs together with the opener, “Nothing Actually Issues.” “Are you cheerful? Are you prepared?” she requested the assembled crowd at one level. The response: wild cheering. “OK, simply checking,” she replied.
At a press briefing forward of the live performance, officers mentioned the protection considerations that may accompany an viewers of that measurement and unpredictable climate on the shore. Final yr, the Brazilian D.J. Alok scheduled what had been billed because the “live performance of the century” on Copacabana Seaside, however a storm led a part of the group to scatter, and concertgoers had been confronted with rampant pickpocketing, an issue at the very least some confronted on Saturday night time as properly.
Marco Andrade, a spokesman for the Rio police, instructed reporters that the division deliberate to deploy 3,200 officers on the Madonna live performance, in contrast with about 900 for Alok’s occasion. He stated that facial recognition expertise could be used at inspection areas, along with drones to watch the group. Ultimately, the viewers stretched into the ocean as properly — a group of boats anchored within the waters close to the venue.
The environment on the bottom Saturday night time was like a World Cup occasion, avenue carnival and New 12 months’s Eve celebration mixed. Road distributors supplied shirts, hats, cups and followers adorned with Madonna’s face and rainbow colours, and a plethora of barbecue, grilled cheese, empanadas and the Brazilian cocktail caipirinhas had been out there. To battle the warmth, a firefighter atop a fireplace truck sprayed a jet of water on the group.
Because the present ended with a remix of her 2009 observe “Celebration,” Madonna addressed the viewers for a ultimate time: “Thanks, Rio,” including “obrigada,” the equal in Portuguese. She smiled and let go of a Brazilian flag, flipped a white veil over her head and descended beneath the stage.
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