(5 May 2024)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rio de Janeiro – 4 May 2024
1. Fans walk on beach towards show and take selfies, various
2. Fans listen to Madonna, in English, thanking them.
3. Fans shout as show begins
4. Pan – man films video w/ mobile phone of stage and crowd
5. Fans enjoying the show
6. Woman yells "you are marvelous!"
7. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Mathias Soares, fan:
"In 2012, when she was in Rio. I couldn’t go to the show because I was in the hospital. Then when I saw that she was going be here for free, I totally want to be here to see Madonna. I believe it will be one of the last opportunities to see her in form on stage, singing. There’s no way I was going to stay away from that face."
8. Zoom out to medium of Silva’s t-shirt
9. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Henrique Lalo Silva, fan:
"I grew up listening to her, ‘Material girl.’ It was the first music video that I interested in, when I saw it on TV, and since then I have followed her entire career – all the albums and everything she has become today. She’s an icon, no doubt about it."
10. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Ana Beatriz Soares, fan:
"Madonna had to run so that today’s pop artists could walk. That’s why she’s important, because she serves as an inspiration for today’s pop divas. And that’s 40 years ago. It’s not 40 days, 40 months. It’s 40 years."
11. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Maria Eduarda Pereira, fan:
"She expresses her way that the public likes. Nowadays there’s a lot of people pretending to get ahead but she does what she wants, by being herself."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rio de Janeiro – 4 May 2024
12. STILL IMAGESX4: Madonna performs in the final show of her The Celebration Tour, on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
STORYLINE:
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 off 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 off 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.
Later, she was joined on stage by Brazilian artists Anitta and Pabllo Vittar.
Rio spent the last few days readying itself for the performance.
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 official website hyped the show as the biggest ever in her four-decade career.
By midday Saturday, fans crowded in front of the hotel. A white-bearded man carried a sign saying, “Welcome Madonna you are the best I love you.”
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