Madonna caps Celebration Tour with free Rio concert in front of record 1.6M fans

RIO DE JANEIRO — Madonna brought her Celebration Tour to a finish in record fashion on Saturday, performing a free concert in Rio de Janeiro before an estimated record crowd of 1.6 million fans.

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The show, announced in late March, was the finale to the Material Girl’s latest world tour, The New York Times reported. The 65-year-old pop superstar, who has racked up 12 No. 1 hits and 38 top-10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 since 1983, was ending an 80-performance tour that began in October.

Saturday night’s concert at Copacabana Beach was Madonna’s first concert in Brazil since 2012, according to Rolling Stone. Riotur, the city’s tourism department, estimated that 1.6 million people flocked to the 2.4-mile beach to match Madonna perform on an 8,700-square-foot stage, the Times reported. That set a record for the largest audience for a standalone concert by any artist in music history, Rolling Stone reported.

That topped the previous mark of approximately 1.5 million who attended a free Rolling Stones concert in 2006, according to the magazine.

Madonna’s previous largest live concert crowd was 130,000 fans during a Paris show in 1987, Deadline reported.

“Here we are, the most beautiful place in the world,” the seven-time Grammy Award winner told the audience during the early portion of her concert, the Times reported. “This is magic.”

The singer performed many of her greatest hits from her four-plus decade career, including “Vogue,” “Like a Prayer,” Hung Up” and “Like a Virgin,” the BBC reported.

For “Vogue,” Madonna appeared in a sparkly dress in the colors of the Brazilian flag, the Times reported. She was joined by Brazilian pop star Anitta, who helped “judge” competitors on the runway.

Madonna opened her show with the 1998 song, “Nothing Really Matters,” Deadline reported. She ended it with a remix of her 2009 song, “Celebration,” according to the Times.

“Thank you, Rio,” the singer told the crowd, adding “obrigada,” the equivalent phrase in Portuguese, the newspaper.

Then she smiled and released a Brazilian flag, flipped a white veil over her hear and descended beneath the stage.

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