Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career.
“Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd.
The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand.
Photo: AP
Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show.
Lady Gaga performed her classic hits, including Poker Face and Alejandro, switching between an array of dresses, including one with the colors of the Brazilian flag.
Some fans — many of them young — arrived on the beach at the crack of dawn to secure a good spot, armed with snacks and drinks. They spent the day under a blazing sun, while others perched in trees, determined to get a panoramic view.
“Today is the best day of my life,” said Manoela Dobes, a 27-year-old designer who was wearing a dress plastered with a photograph from when she met Lady Gaga in the US in 2019.
“It’s surreal to be here,” Dobes said.
The large-scale performances are part of an effort led by City Hall to boost economic activity after Carnival and New Years’ Eve festivities and the upcoming month-long Saint John’s Day celebrations next month.
“It brings activity to the city during what was previously considered the low season — filling hotels and increasing spending in bars, restaurants, and retail, generating jobs and income for the population,” Rio Secretary of Economic Development Osmar Lima said in a statement.
Rio City Hall in a recent report said that the show should inject at least 600 million reais (US$106 million) into Rio’s economy.
Similar concerts are scheduled to take place every year in May at least until 2028.
More than 500,000 tourists poured into the city in the days leading up to the show, more than double the initial forecast, according to data from the local bus station and Tom Jobim airport, Rio City Hall said in a statement on Friday.
Ingrid Serrano, a 30-year-old engineer, made a cross-continent trip from Colombia to Brazil to attend the show.
“I’ve been a 100 percent fan of Lady Gaga my whole life,” said Serrano, who was wearing a T-shirt featuring Lady Gaga’s outlandish costumes over the years.
For her, the mega-star represents “total freedom of expression — being who one wants without shame.”
Rio officials have a history of organizing huge concerts on Copacabana Beach. Madonna’s show drew an estimated 1.6 million fans last year, while 4 million people flooded onto the beach for a 1994 New Year’s Eve show by Rod Stewart in 1994. That was the biggest free rock concert in history, according to Guinness World Records.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS