When Madonna took to the massive stage constructed on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach on Saturday night wearing a sparkling headdress and black kimono, she was greeted by the largest live crowd of her four-decade career.
The free show, announced in late March, was a grand finale to the pop star’s latest world tour, which has played 80 shows since last October. Without ticket data, it can be difficult to measure the size of concert crowds; The municipal tourism department, Reuters, estimated that 1.6 million people flooded the 2.4-mile stretch of sand on Saturday, which was transformed into a roughly $12 million playground surrounding the 8,700-square-foot theater.
It was the culmination of days of Madonna-mania in the city, where talk of the 65-year-old singer was inevitable. Her songs spread from stores and car stereos. Fans gathered outside the hotel where she was staying and chanted her name. Updates about the ceremony broadcast by the Globo TV network dominated local media reports.
The scene in Rio marked a milestone in Madonna’s career: a victory lap on the first leg of her retrospective, called the Celebration Tour, in which she chronicled her rise to stardom, performing songs like “Into the Groove,” “Like a Pray,” and ” Ray of Light” with a cadre of dancers, four of her six children, and an elaborate wardrobe reminiscent of some of her most memorable looks.
“Here we are, the most beautiful place in the world,” Madonna announced early in the concert, referring to the ocean and surrounding mountains. “this is magic.” Later, she expressed her gratitude to her Brazilian fans. “You’ve always been there for me,” she said. “That flag: that green and yellow flag, I see it everywhere. I feel it in my heart.”
Rio’s two-hour-plus show was closely identical to the Celebration show, with a few exceptions: Madonna added her 2000 hit “Music” to the set list, rearranged in a samba format with live drummers and a special guest, Brazilian drag star Pablo. Vitar. The “Live to Tell” program, which was organized in honor of AIDS victims, included photos of Brazilian musicians Casuza and Renato Russo, and actress Sandra Pria. In Vogue magazine, Madonna appeared in a bright dress in the colors of the Brazilian flag and was joined by pop singer Anita, who helped “judge” the competitors who were strutting down the runway.
The show had Madonna’s lifelong fans — many of whom came dressed in tribute to their heroine in cone bras and lace gloves — screaming and dancing along. Ernesto Magalhaes, 42, who wore a “Material Girl”-era Madonna dress and boa while balancing on stilts, captured the lively spirit of the occasion: “I’ve been a Madonna fan since I was eight years old; Madonna since I was eight; I’ve been a Madonna fan since I was eight; Surya Rossi, a 31-year-old painter, decided to take a last-minute trip from Rio Claro, São Paulo, after coordinating with her cousin, and stayed with friends. “Madonna had a huge influence on me, both as a feminist and an artist,” she said. “Its empowering history and approach inspire me.”
It also marked a landmark moment for live concerts globally. At a time when ticket prices are astronomical and production costs for major shows are soaring, a free concert that attracts a crowd of this size is extremely rare, especially in the United States. California’s Coachella festival, where a three-day general admission ticket starts at about $500, attracts up to 125,000 participants a day. Musikfest, a free music festival in Pennsylvania, welcomed about 1.3 million visitors over 11 days last year.
“To have a free show like this in recent years is relatively unheard of,” Caitlin Yount, festival director at AEG Presents, said of Madonna’s closing show. The Hangout, an upcoming music festival on Alabama’s Gulf Coast that is among AEG’s annual events, has a daily attendance of about 40,000 attendees, who pay more than $300 for a three-day ticket.
If a show of this size is scheduled to take place anywhere in 2024, it will likely be in Rio, where officials have experience handling massive crowds. In 2006, about 1.5 million people attended a free Rolling Stones concert on Copacabana Beach, Brazilian police and other authorities said at the time. A larger crowd was said to have gathered for Rod Stewart’s show there on New Year’s Eve in 1994.
The idea for the sprawling event was first floated two years ago, when Luiz Guilherme Niemeyer, CEO of Bonus Track, a live entertainment company based in Rio de Janeiro, contacted Madonna’s managers after hearing about the tour plans. He said a Rolling Stones concert in 2006 helped convince him that something like this was possible.
Negotiations stalled until last year, when Madonna’s show in Mexico City was announced — set dates for her five-night celebration tour there at Los Deportes Palace had expired — and Niemeyer resumed his efforts to convince the pop star’s representatives and secure financing. .
“It was an ambitious project for everyone, aiming to attract the biggest audience of her career, and I thought this would help me convince her,” Niemeyer said in an interview last week.
Among the companies supporting the ceremony were the Brazilian banks Itao and Heineken, and the government also made large investments.
Preparations for the Madonna Palooza have consumed part of the city in recent days. A week ago, cargo planes carried about 270 tons of concert materials to the city, including costumes and gym equipment. Eighteen audio and video towers were built along the beach, and last Wednesday, 4,000 workers set up the stage in the scorching heat.
Since this was the only celebration concert in South America, as Madonna had another tour there in 2012, fans gathered from all over the continent. In the days leading up to the event, Madonna impersonator Islin Cristina danced to “La Isla Bonita” at the bus station as she greeted travelers. She will not be attending the concert because excitement over the star’s performance has led to a flood of bookings.
“This is the life of an artist,” she said. “You’re in the business of moving and entertaining people.”
Madonna and her tour team of about 200 people arrived Monday in Rio, heading straight to the French Riviera-inspired Copacabana Palace, the luxury hotel near where the theater was built. Later in the week, crowds gathered as close to the stage as possible, as the pop star crossed a pedestrian bridge from the hotel to the stage to rehearse with some of her dancers.
Social media was filled with clips of Madonna previewing songs including the opening track, “Nothing Really Matters.” “Are you happy? Are you ready?” she asked the gathered crowd at one point. Response: wild cheering. “Okay, just checking,” she replied.
At a press conference before the concert, officials discussed the safety concerns that can accompany an audience of this size and the unpredictable weather at the beach. Last year, Brazilian DJ Alok scheduled what was billed as the “party of the century” on Copacabana Beach, but a storm scattered part of the crowd, and partygoers faced widespread pickpocketing, a problem at least some faced on Saturday night as well.
Rio police spokesman Marco Andrade told reporters that police planned to deploy 3,200 officers at Madonna’s concert, compared to about 900 at Alok’s concert. He said that facial recognition technology will be used in inspection areas, in addition to drones to monitor crowds. Eventually, the crowd spilled out into the ocean as well — a group of boats anchored in the water near the event venue.
The atmosphere on the ground Saturday night was like a World Cup event, street carnival and New Year’s Eve celebration combined. Street vendors offered T-shirts, hats, mugs and fans decorated with Madonna’s face and rainbow colors, and also offered a wealth of barbecue, grilled cheese, empanadas and Brazilian caipirinhas. To combat the heat, a firefighter on top of a fire truck sprayed water on the crowd.
As the show ended with a remix of her 2009 song “Celebration,” Madonna addressed the audience one last time: “Thank you, Rio,” adding “obrigada,” the Portuguese equivalent. She smiled and left the Brazilian flag, flipped a white veil over her head and descended under the stage.