The Celebration Tour
The Celebration Tour was the twelfth concert tour by American singer-songwriter Madonna. It began on October 14, 2023, at the O2 Arena in London and ended on May 4, 2024, with a free concert on Copacabana Beach at Rio de Janeiro. Originally set to start on July 15, 2023, in Vancouver, the tour was postponed to October after Madonna developed a bacterial infection in late June which led to a multiple-day stay at an intensive care unit. As her first retrospective tour, it was based entirely on her back catalogue and 40-year career.
Rumors of a tour first began circulating in mid-to-late 2022, following the release of the compilation Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones. After major speculation, the tour was officially announced on January 17, 2023, in a truth or dare-inspired video. Madonna's first all-arena tour since 2016, tickets quickly sold out and multiple dates were subsequently added in many major cities. Celebration would eventually become one of the fastest-selling concert tours.
Stufish, a British company Madonna had worked with in the past, was in charge of the stage which was inspired by New York in the early 1980s. Designers working on the wardrobe included Guram Gvasalia from Vetements, Donatella Versace, Jean Paul Gaultier, and Dilara Fındıkoğlu. The official set list included songs Madonna had not performed live in more than a decade. Madonna paid tribute to the LGBT community, friends lost to HIV/AIDS, and artists who have inspired her in concert.
Critics reacted positively towards the tour, highlighting its retrospective nature. Criticism was aimed at the singer's tardiness, with attendees going as far as to file two lawsuits against her. Billboard reported Celebration to have grossed over $225.4 million from an audience of 1.1 million, scoring one of the highest-grossing tours of 2024. The free concert in Rio de Janeiro drew a crowd of over 1.6 million people, which became Madonna's largest crowd of her career and at the time set records for the largest audience ever for a stand-alone concert and the largest all-time crowd for a female artist. It subsequently inspired the project Todo Mundo no Rio, a series of international music megashows promoted by the City of Rio de Janeiro to take place in Copacabana Beach every year until 2028.
Background
On August 19, 2022, Madonna released Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones, a compilation album that includes remixes of her 50 number-one hits on the US Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. Following the release, the singer uploaded a six-minute video on her YouTube account in which she answered 50 of her fans' "most burning" questions; one asked if she was going to tour to promote the release, to which she answered: "Do you want me to go on tour?" Prior to the compilation's release, Madonna had expressed her desire to embark on a concert tour during an interview with Variety, where she referred to the stage as her "happy place". Rumors of a tour began circulating in October 2022, after outlets in Latin America began reporting that Madonna had booked a reservation at Montevideo's Estadio Centenario for early October 2023.In January 2023, Billboard, among other publications, announced that Madonna was planning an "anniversary" tour to celebrate her "deep catalog of hits", and that dates had already been booked at the O2 Arena in London. Rumors were fueled after the singer deleted her Instagram posts on January 16. The following day, Madonna officially announced the Celebration Tour through a video. Inspired by her 1991 film Truth or Dare and joined by Diplo, Jack Black, Lil Wayne, and Bob the Drag Queen, among others, the visual ended with Amy Schumer daring Madonna to go on tour and perform her "four decades of mega hits". According to Bob, no one in the video knew what was supposed to happen until the cameras started rolling. A release on Madonna's website referred to the show as an "artistic journey through four decades", with the singer herself adding that she wanted to "explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for". Celebration saw Madonna's return to arenas, as her previous Madame X Tour played only theaters.
Development
On October 12, 2022, Madonna attended Post Malone's Twelve Carat Tour, a show where creative director Lewis James had worked on. After attending, the singer became interested in working with James, and later appointed him and long time collaborator Jamie King as creative directors for Celebration. According to James, she was "extremely involved in the process and she knows what she wants". Ricardo Gomes was commissioned as tour's footage creative director; his job was to film the concert for Madonna, then watch the show every night and see if camera angles had been altered. Choreography was in charge of Marseille-based collective Horde, consisting of Martina Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Arthur Harel; Madonna heard of the trio through one of her dancers, and contacted them via Instagram. When envisioning numbers, the trio would draw influence from the singer's past. "We were playing with this idea of a retrospective. Sometimes we had to refresh an older choreography, and sometimes we got to be a bit more meta, comparing today against who she was at the time", recalled Brutti.English musician Stuart Price was appointed musical director after a call he had with Madonna following the tour's announcement. He explained to the BBC that the tour would draw from four decades of archive footage and studio recordings; "A greatest hit doesn't have to be a song. It can be a wardrobe, it can be a video, or a statement". Price also revealed that the concert's storyline would be “highly evolved really, really compelling". Personnel working on the tour included 24 dancers, 3 physical therapists, and a traveling crew of over 200 people ―including 25 in the costume department. Bob the Drag Queen was hired by the singer to act as emcee and hype man throughout the concert, having previously met at a pride show in 2022. He jokingly recalled: " DM'd my mom on Instagram My mom texted me like, 'Madonna wants to work with me!'"
According to co-manager Sara Zambreno, the singer's vast catalogue proved to be a problem during the early stages of planning, with the team considering to do different tours each representing a decade: "It was an embarrassment of riches, of songs and visuals and costumes and videos to choose from. And how do you pick? Everyone’s going to have a different opinion on what makes the most sense to put on screen. At the end of the day the best solve was just her voice, her narrative, her story and how she wanted to tell it".
Hospitalization and postponement
On June 24, 2023, Madonna was rushed to the hospital; she was admitted to a several-day stay at an intensive care unit due to a "serious bacterial infection". Her manager Guy Oseary took to Instagram to release a statement, writing: " health is improving, however she is still under medical care will need to pause all commitments, which includes the tour". Live Nation confirmed that the first leg of the tour, planned to kick off July 15 in Vancouver, would be postponed.In late July 2023, Madonna expressed her gratitude for her fans, team, and family: "Thank you for your positive energy, prayers and words of healing and encouragement My focus now is on my health and getting stronger and I assure you, I’ll be back with you as soon as I can!", read a social media post. She also said that the plan was to reschedule the North American dates. In a Pollstar article, manager Guy Oseary commented that, since the tour was about "celebrating" Madonna's career and life, it was "perfect that it aligned already with celebrating her 40 years and then something like this happens". He also stated that the health mishap wouldn't necessarily change the run of the show but, "just more emotion to it" and became more of a "meaningful blessing" after what Madonna endured and came back from.
On August 15, 2023, the rescheduled dates were announced. The Celebration Tour officially began in London on October 14, 2023, and wrapped up with a "historic" free concert in Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach on May 4, 2024. To commemorate the London concerts, the royal family's flagmakers, Flying Colours, made a Royal Standard flag for Madonna's honor. Set to fly at full mast the days of the concerts, the red and gold flag showed an image taken from her third album True Blue. Chris Taylor from Flying Colours commented: " is true pop royalty. We've been manufacturing flags for the Royal Family for over 20 years, but we've never made a flag quite like this".
Rehearsals
Rehearsals began in early April 2023. By June, before Madonna's time in the hospital, sessions were taking place at Uniondale's Nassau Coliseum. Rehearsals resumed at the same venue in mid-August, after Madonna was discharged from the hospital. In October, the week before opening night, it was reported that the troupe had moved to the AO Arena in Manchester for the final dress rehearsals. According to GQ magazine, rehearsals went on for six weeks after Madonna's return to the hospital. Stufish Entertainment stage director and architech Ric Lipson recalled that, "Madonna rehearses unlike most artists Other, their dancers go and build the show somewhere and they come in a few weeks later".Production
Staging
For the stage, Madonna worked with London-based company Stufish, with whom she had worked on the MDNA, Rebel Heart, and Madame X tours. Lipson explained that they wanted to do something different to those outings, and came to the conclusion of a more immersive experience; "the way is seen, through video and her social media now for example, has changed. So we thought about making a show about where she is in the room".According to James, the show revolves around four main themes: Time, New York City, fragments, and "the story of ". Drawing on these elements, as well as the singer's 40-year long career, the stage was conceived as an abstract map of New York, with a network of B-stages and runways inspired by the streets and blocks of Manhattan —Uptown, Downtown, Midtown, East and West. The team also came up with a kinetic, revolving, three-layered circular central stage that refers to both the wedding cake from Madonna's performance of "Like a Virgin" at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards and a clock's shape. Also present was a floating, illuminated portal frame that lifted Madonna off the ground, and moved at per second. It allowed the singer to fly over the audience and move between the stage. According to Lipson, the portal was meant to act like a "time machine". "Live to Tell" was one of the numbers that saw Madonna riding the flying portal.
For the song "Bedtime Story", the front of the stage would rise and transform into a giant cube. Projectors covered each side of the cube, and depicted a video created by Brazilian video game developer Gabriel Massan. Inspired by the original "Bedtime Story" music video, Massan's visual depicted "dreamy" landscapes, while Madonna's movements were recorded in real time and linked to an avatar that emulated them. The stage also came equipped with a vast circular lighting rig, 14 spotlights, 600 intelligent lighting, and over 8,800 lighting cues. Props included a massive disco ball for "Holiday", and a carousel adorned with crosses for "Like a Prayer".