EGN NEWS DESK
When Madonna stepped out onto the mammoth stage constructed on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach on Saturday night time in a gleaming halo headpiece and black kimono, she was greeted by the most important stay crowd of her four-decade profession.
The free present, introduced in late March, was a grand finale to the pop celebrity’s newest world tour, which has delivered 80 performances since final October. Without ticket knowledge, live performance crowd sizes could 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 became a roughly $12 million playground surrounding the 8,700-square-foot stage.
It was the fruits of days of Madonna-mania within the metropolis, the place speak of the singer, 65, was inescapable. Her songs spilled out of shops and automotive stereos. Fans assembled outdoors her lodge and shouted her identify. Updates concerning 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, known as the Celebration Tour, through which she chronicled her rise to stardom, performing hits like “Into the Groove,” “Like a Prayer” and “Ray of Light” with a cadre of dancers, 4 of her six youngsters, and a wardrobe of elaborate costuming that recalled a few of her most memorable appears.
“Here we’re, probably the most lovely place on the earth,” Madonna introduced early within the live performance, indicating the ocean and the mountains round her. “This is magic.” Later, she expounded on her gratitude for her Brazilian followers. “You have at all times 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 two-plus-hour Rio present hewed carefully to the Celebration present, with a couple of exceptions: Madonna added her 2000 monitor “Music” to the set listing, rearranged as a samba with stay drummers and a particular visitor, the Brazilian drag star Pabllo Vittar. “Live to Tell,” staged as a tribute to victims of AIDS, included images of the Brazilian musicians Cazuza and Renato Russo, and the actress Sandra Bréa. For “Vogue,” Madonna appeared in a shiny gown within the colours of the Brazilian flag and was joined by the pop sensation Anitta, who helped “judge” 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 “Material Girl” 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 associates. “Madonna has been an amazing 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 exhibits, a free live performance attracting a crowd of this scale is exceedingly uncommon, particularly within the United States. California’s Coachella competition, the place a three-day normal admission move begins at about $500, attracts as much as 125,000 attendees a day. Musikfest, a principally free music competition in Pennsylvania, welcomed about 1.3 million guests over 11 days final 12 months.
“To have a free present like that lately is comparatively unheard-of,” Katelyn Yount, the director of festivals at AEG Presents, stated of Madonna’s closing present. Hangout, an upcoming music competition 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 move.
If a efficiency of this magnitude was going to be held anyplace 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 Beach, Brazilian police and different authorities stated on the time. An even bigger crowd was stated to have gathered for a Rod Stewart present there on New Year’s Eve in 1994.
The concept for the sprawling occasion was first planted two years in the past, when Luiz Guilherme Niemeyer, an govt with Bonus Track, 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 potential, he stated.
Negotiations stalled till final 12 months, when a Madonna present in Mexico City 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 formidable venture for everybody, aiming to draw the most important viewers of her profession, and I believed this could 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 major funding as nicely.
Preparation for Madonna-palooza had consumed a section of the town in current days. Every week in the past, cargo planes carried about 270 tons of live performance materials to the town, together with costumes and gymnasium tools. Eighteen sound and video towers have been constructed throughout the seaside, and final Wednesday, 4,000 employees ready the stage in scorching warmth.
Because this was the one Celebration live performance in South America — Madonna final toured there in 2012 — followers congregated from everywhere in the continent. In the times 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 celebrity’s efficiency had led to a flood of bookings.
“Such is the lifetime of an artist,” she stated. “You work to maneuver and entertain folks.”
On Monday, Madonna and her touring crew of about 200 arrived in Rio, heading on to the French Riviera-inspired Copacabana Palace, the luxurious lodge close to the place the stage was constructed. Later within the week, crowds gathered as near the stage as potential, 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 working by means of songs together with the opener, “Nothing Really Matters.” “Are you content? Are you prepared?” she asked the assembled crowd at one point. The response: wild cheering. “OK, simply checking,” she replied.
At a press briefing forward of the live performance, officers mentioned the security considerations that may accompany an viewers of that dimension and unpredictable climate on the shore. Last 12 months, the Brazilian D.J. Alok scheduled what had been billed because the “live performance of the century” on Copacabana Beach, however a storm led a part of the group to scatter, and concertgoers have been confronted with rampant pickpocketing, an issue at the very least some confronted on Saturday night time as nicely.
Marco Andrade, a spokesman for the Rio police, advised 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 know-how could be used at inspection areas, along with drones to watch the group. In the tip, the viewers stretched into the ocean as nicely — 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, road carnival and New Year’s Eve celebration mixed. Street distributors provided 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 have been out there. To combat the warmth, a firefighter atop a hearth truck sprayed a jet of water on the group.
As the present ended with a remix of her 2009 monitor “Celebration,” Madonna addressed the viewers for a last time: “Thank you, 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.
