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When Madonna stepped out onto the mammoth stage constructed on Rio de Janeiro\u2019s Copacabana Beach on Saturday night in a gleaming halo headpiece and black kimono, she was greeted by the largest live crowd of her four-decade career.<\/p>\n
The free show, announced in late March, was a grand finale to the pop superstar\u2019s latest world tour, which has delivered 80 performances since last October<\/a>. Without ticket data, concert crowd sizes can be difficult to gauge; Riotur, the municipality\u2019s tourism department, estimated that 1.6 million people flooded onto the 2.4-mile stretch of sand on Saturday that had been turned into a roughly $12 million playground surrounding the 8,700-square-foot stage.<\/p>\n It was the culmination of days of Madonna-mania in the city, where talk of the singer, 65, was inescapable. Her songs spilled out of stores and car stereos. Fans assembled outside her hotel and shouted her name. Updates about the concert, which was broadcast on the network Globo TV, dominated local media reports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The spectacle in Rio was a milestone in Madonna\u2019s career: the victory lap for her first stage retrospective, called the Celebration Tour<\/a>, in which she chronicled her rise to stardom, performing hits like \u201cInto the Groove,\u201d \u201cLike a Prayer\u201d and \u201cRay of Light\u201d with a cadre of dancers, four of her six children, and a wardrobe of elaborate costuming that recalled some of her most memorable looks.<\/p>\n \u201cHere we are, the most beautiful place in the world,\u201d Madonna announced early in the concert, indicating the ocean and the mountains around her. \u201cThis is magic.\u201d Later, she expounded on her gratitude for her Brazilian fans. \u201cYou have always been there for me,\u201d she said. \u201cThat flag: that green-and-yellow flag, I see it everywhere. I feel it in my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n The two-plus-hour Rio show hewed closely to the Celebration show, with a few exceptions: Madonna added her 2000 track \u201cMusic\u201d to the set list, rearranged as a samba with live drummers and a special guest, the Brazilian drag star Pabllo Vittar. \u201cLive to Tell,\u201d staged as a tribute to victims of AIDS<\/a>, included photographs of the Brazilian musicians Cazuza and Renato Russo, and the actress Sandra Br\u00e9a. For \u201cVogue,\u201d Madonna appeared in a sparkly dress in the colors of the Brazilian flag and was joined by the pop sensation Anitta<\/a>, who helped \u201cjudge\u201d the competitors strutting down the runway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The show had lifelong Madonna fans \u2014 many of whom came dressed in homage to their heroine in cone bras and lace gloves \u2014 screaming and dancing along. Ernesto Magalh\u00e3es, 42, adorned in the style of Madonna\u2019s \u201cMaterial Girl\u201d era in a gown and boa while balancing on stilts, epitomized the exuberant spirit of the occasion: \u201cI\u2019ve been a Madonna fan since I was 8; I couldn\u2019t miss this.\u201d Surya Rossi, a 31-year-old illustrator, decided on a last-minute trip from Rio Claro, S\u00e3o Paulo, after coordinating with her cousin, and stayed with friends. \u201cMadonna has been a tremendous influence on me, both as a feminist and an artist,\u201d she said. \u201cHer empowering history and approach inspire me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was also something of a landmark moment for live concerts globally. At a time of astronomical ticket prices<\/a> and rising production costs for major shows, a free concert attracting a crowd of this scale is exceedingly rare, especially in the United States. California\u2019s Coachella festival, where a three-day general admission pass starts at about $500, draws up to 125,000 attendees a day. Musikfest, a mostly free music festival in Pennsylvania, welcomed about 1.3 million visitors over 11 days last year.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cTo have a free show like that in recent years is relatively unheard-of,\u201d Katelyn Yount, the director of festivals at AEG Presents, said of Madonna\u2019s closing show. Hangout, an upcoming music festival on Alabama\u2019s Gulf Coast that is among the annual events AEG produces, is capped each day at about 40,000 attendees, who pay more than $300 for a three-day pass.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n If a performance of this magnitude was going to be held anywhere in 2024, it would probably be in Rio, where officials have experience with enormous crowds. In 2006, about 1.5 million people attended a free Rolling Stones concert<\/a> at Copacabana Beach, Brazilian police and other authorities said at the time. An even larger crowd was said to have gathered for a Rod Stewart show there on New Year\u2019s Eve in 1994.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The idea for the sprawling event was first planted two years ago, when Luiz Guilherme Niemeyer, an executive with Bonus Track, a live entertainment company based in Rio de Janeiro, approached Madonna\u2019s managers after hearing about plans for the tour. The Rolling Stones concert in 2006 helped convince him that something like this was possible, he said.<\/p>\n Negotiations stalled until last year, when a Madonna show in Mexico City was announced \u2014 ticketed dates for the Celebration Tour ended up wrapping with five nights there at the Palacio de los Deportes \u2014 and Niemeyer resumed his efforts to convince the pop star\u2019s representatives and secure funding.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an ambitious project for everyone, aiming to attract the largest audience of her career, and I thought this would help me persuade her,\u201d Niemeyer said in an interview last week.<\/p>\n The concert\u2019s corporate backers include the Brazilian bank Ita\u00fa and Heineken, and the government has made a significant investment as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Preparation for Madonna-palooza had consumed a segment of the city in recent days. A week ago, cargo planes carried about 270 tons of concert material to the city, including costumes and gym equipment. Eighteen sound and video towers were built across the beach, and last Wednesday, 4,000 workers prepared the stage in scorching heat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Because this was the only Celebration concert in South America \u2014 Madonna last toured there in 2012 \u2014 fans congregated from all over the continent. In the days leading up to the event, a Madonna impersonator, Izelene Cristina, danced to \u201cLa Isla Bonita\u201d at a bus station as she welcomed travelers. She would not be attending the concert because excitement over the superstar\u2019s performance had led to a flood of bookings.<\/p>\n \u201cSuch is the life of an artist,\u201d she said. \u201cYou work to move and entertain people.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday, Madonna and her touring team of about 200 arrived in Rio, heading directly to the French Riviera-inspired Copacabana Palace, the luxury hotel near where the stage was built. Later in the week, crowds gathered as close to the stage as possible, as the pop star crossed a specially built footbridge from the hotel to the stage to rehearse with some of her dancers.<\/p>\n Social media was flooded with clips of Madonna running through songs including the opener, \u201cNothing Really Matters.\u201d \u201cAre you happy? Are you ready?\u201d she asked the assembled crowd at one point<\/a>. The response: wild cheering. \u201cOK, just checking,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At a press briefing ahead of the concert, officials discussed the safety concerns that can accompany an audience of that size and unpredictable weather on the shore. Last year, the Brazilian D.J. Alok scheduled what had been billed as the \u201cconcert of the century\u201d on Copacabana Beach, but a storm led part of the crowd to scatter, and concertgoers were faced with rampant pickpocketing<\/a>, a problem at least some faced on Saturday night as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Marco Andrade, a spokesman for the Rio police, told reporters that the department planned to deploy 3,200 officers at the Madonna concert, compared with about 900 for Alok\u2019s event. He said that facial recognition technology would be used at inspection areas, in addition to drones to monitor the crowd. In the end, the audience stretched into the ocean as well \u2014 a collection of boats anchored in the waters near the venue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The atmosphere on the ground Saturday night was like a World Cup event, street carnival and New Year\u2019s Eve celebration combined. Street vendors offered shirts, hats, cups and fans adorned with Madonna\u2019s face and rainbow colors, and a plethora of barbecue, grilled cheese, empanadas and the Brazilian cocktail caipirinhas were available. To fight the heat, a firefighter atop a fire truck sprayed a jet of water on the crowd.<\/p>\n As the show ended with a remix of her 2009 track \u201cCelebration,\u201d Madonna addressed the audience for a final time: \u201cThank you, Rio,\u201d adding \u201cobrigada,\u201d the equivalent in Portuguese. She smiled and let go of a Brazilian flag, flipped a white veil over her head and descended beneath the stage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n