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 most important dwell 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. With out ticket knowledge, live performance crowd sizes may be troublesome 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. Followers assembled outdoors her resort and shouted her title. 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, during which she chronicled her rise to stardom, performing hits like “Into the Groove,” “Like a Prayer” and “Ray of Gentle” 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 to be like.
“Right here we’re, essentially the most lovely place on the earth,” 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 have got all the time been there for me,” she mentioned. “That flag: that green-and-yellow flag, I see it in all places. 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 record, rearranged as a samba with dwell drummers and a particular visitor, the Brazilian drag star Pabllo Vittar. “Stay to Inform,” 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 costume within the colours of the Brazilian flag and was joined by the pop sensation Anitta, who helped “choose” the rivals strutting down the runway.
The present had lifelong Madonna followers — lots 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 mates. “Madonna has been an amazing affect on me, each as a feminist and an artist,” she mentioned. “Her empowering historical past and method encourage me.”
It was additionally one thing of a landmark second for dwell 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 in the US. California’s Coachella competition, the place a three-day basic admission cross begins at about $500, attracts as much as 125,000 attendees a day. Musikfest, a largely free music competition in Pennsylvania, welcomed about 1.3 million guests over 11 days final yr.
“To have a free present like that lately is comparatively unheard-of,” Katelyn Yount, the director of festivals at AEG Presents, mentioned 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 cross.
If a efficiency of this magnitude was going to be held anyplace in 2024, it might in all probability be in Rio, the place officers have expertise with monumental crowds. In 2006, about 1.5 million folks attended a free Rolling Stones live performance at Copacabana Seaside, Brazilian police and different authorities mentioned on the time. A good bigger crowd was mentioned to have gathered for a Rod Stewart present there on New 12 months’s Eve in 1994.
The thought for the sprawling occasion was first planted two years in the past, when Luiz Guilherme Niemeyer, an government with Bonus Observe, a dwell 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 attainable, he mentioned.
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 formidable challenge for everybody, aiming to draw the most important viewers of her profession, and I believed this could assist me persuade her,” Niemeyer mentioned 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 health club gear. Eighteen sound and video towers had been constructed throughout the seashore, and final Wednesday, 4,000 employees 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 celebrity’s efficiency had led to a flood of bookings.
“Such is the lifetime of an artist,” she mentioned. “You’re employed to maneuver and entertain folks.”
On Monday, Madonna and her touring group of about 200 arrived in Rio, heading on to the French Riviera-inspired Copacabana Palace, the posh resort close to the place the stage was constructed. Later within the week, crowds gathered as near the stage as attainable, because the pop star crossed a specifically constructed footbridge from the resort to the stage to rehearse with a few of her dancers.
Social media was flooded with clips of Madonna operating by way of 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 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 mentioned that facial recognition expertise can be used at inspection areas, along with drones to observe the group. In the long run, the viewers stretched into the ocean as nicely — a set 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 12 months’s Eve celebration mixed. Road 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 had been obtainable. To battle the warmth, a firefighter atop a hearth 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 closing 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.
