Pop superstar Madonna was set to wrap up her world ” Re-Invention Tour ” with a second sold-out show in Lisbon after more than three months on the road.
Since kicking off her tour, her first in three years, in Los Angeles in May, more than 900,000 fans have seen the one-hour-40-minute show which has also taken the 46-year-old pop diva to London, Paris, Washington and her former home New York where she performed for six nights.
As in all other cities where she has performed, tickets for the concerts in the Portuguese capital sold out within hours of going on sale.
The pop star wowed the 15,000-strong audience at the riverside Atlantic Pavillon in Lisbon on Monday night, her first-ever performance in Portugal. ” People kept applauding, it was complete hysteria. Sometimes you couldn’t even hear the music ,” 35-year-old Paulo Figueiredo, who wore a kilt to the concert to mimic the star, told AFP.
Some fans had camped outside of the venue since Saturday to ensure they had a close-up look at the singer as she performed classics such as ” Vogue “, ” Frozen ” and ” Papa Don’t Preach “. Many heeded a call by a local fan group who had asked people to turn out for the concert dressed in white, while others wore large crucifixes to imitate the look used by the star in her earlier “Like a Virgin” days.
Among those in attendance was Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes who watched the show with one of his sons. ” It was a fantastic show. I am very happy that it took place in Portugal ,” he told reporters afterwards.
Images from both Lisbon concerts were being filmed to be turned into a DVD of the tour to be released in 2005. Unlike in previous Madonna tours which made headlines for their sexual themes, the singer adopted a more spiritual approach in her latest tour, touching on themes of war and famine which was not always well received by critics, with some – especially in Britain – accusing her of preaching.
Throughout the duration of the show, anti-war video images of helicopters, tanks, atomic blasts and wounded children were broadcast on giant screens as well as dummies of George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. Famished African children featured in the backdrop to accompany her version of John Lennon’s ” Imagine “, which closed with a Palestinian and Israeli child walking side by side.
While praise for the special effects and high production standards were almost unanimous, some fans faulted the singer for not interacting much with the audience. ” As a pop concert I think it is the best thing I have seen. But I thought she was a bit cold ,” said 36-year-old lawyer Miguel Feldmann.
Once her current ” Re-Invention ” world tour is closed, Madonna plans a pilgrimage-retreat to Israel in observance of her new Kabbalah beliefs. The pop diva began looking into Kabbalah – or at least a modern version of the Jewish mystical tradition – in 1997, and is now one of its most high-profile proponents.
Source: AFP via Yahoo! News
Comments
Post a Comment