Madonna puts on huge beach show
RIO DE JANEIRO — Madonna put on a free concert on Copacabana beach Saturday night, turning Rio de Janeiro’s vast stretch of sand into an enormous dance floor teeming with a multitude of her fans.
It was the last show of The Celebration Tour, her first retrospective, which kicked o in October in London.
The “Queen of Pop” began the show with her 1998 hit Nothing Really
Matters. Huge cheers rose from the buzzing, tightly packed crowd, pressed up against the barriers. Others held house parties in brightly lighted apartments and hotels overlooking the beachfront. Helicopters and drones flew overhead, and motorboats and sailboats anchored o the beach filled the bay.
“Here we are in the most beautiful place in the world,” Madonna, 65, told the crowd. Pointing out the ocean view, the mountains and the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking the city, she added: “This place is magic.”
Madonna performed her classic hits, including Like A Virgin and Hung Up. For the introduction to Like A Prayer, her head was completely covered in a black cape, a rosary gripped in her hands.
The star paid an emotional tribute to “all the bright lights” lost to AIDS as she sang Live to Tell, with black and white photos of people who died from the illness flashing behind her.
An estimated 1.6 million people attended the show, G1 reported, citing Rio City Hall’s tourism agency. That is more than 10 times Madonna’s record attendance of 130,000 at Paris’ Parc des Sceaux in 1987. Madonna’s ocial website hyped the show as the biggest ever in her four-decade career.