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Madonna’s Latest Experiment: Looking Back

Her Celebration Tour is the pop superstar’s first retrospective, one which thematically explores her past and perhaps offers a glimpse of how she will chart her future.

By Caryn Ganz

For 40 years, evolution, rebellion and resilience have been Madonna’s hallmarks , but forward momentum is her life force. She’s been pop music’s premier shark, operating in near perpetual motion: Why would she pause to bask or look back, and risk losing oxygen?

So there are understandable touches of both defiance and reluctance to the Celebration Tour , her first road show devoted to hits rather than a new album. The retrospective began its North American leg at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday night with all the classic trappings of a Madonna spectacle. But unlike her 11 prior tours of this scale, this one was haunted by ghosts — some invited, and some who crashed the party.

The set list began with a moment of birth — not the start of Madonna’s career, but the arrival of her first child — via “Nothing Really Matters,” a song from her 1998 album, “Ray of Light,” about how parenthood rearranges priorities. The anachronism was a table-setter: If Celebration recounts her life story, its arc was animated by her experiences of losing her mother and becoming one, herself. “Never forget where you came from,” she instructed a dancer who served as an avatar for her younger self, whom she then gave a maternal hug.

The first part of the concert, which was divided into seven chapters, was its most carefree (“Everybody,” “Holiday,” “Open Your Heart”). But the joy was built on struggle. Before Madonna took the stage, the night’s M.C., Bob the Drag Queen, reminded the crowd that the singer came to New York City from Detroit with $35 in her pocket and scattered faux bills.

Decked out in a teal corset, a black miniskirt and a jacket adorned with chains, Madonna, 65, conjured some of the gritty energy of the late-1970s downtown scene where she first found like-minded creative spirits. It was a relief to be back, she said with a barrage of f-bombs, as she strapped on an electric guitar for a power-chord-heavy version of “I Love New York” blended with “Burning Up.” Vintage photos of CBGB , where she played one of her earliest gigs, lit up on the screen behind her.

Glee was soon tempered by devastation: The community of artists who gave Madonna a home was decimated by AIDS, and she presented “Live to Tell” as a powerful tribute . Screens suspended around the stage, which stretched nearly the length of the floor on a series of runways, at first displayed single faces. The images then multiplied, demonstrating the scale of the epidemic. There were simply too many tales to tell.

Over two-plus hours, Madonna resisted the simplest routes to depicting her own story. After the first section, the concert was only loosely chronological, leaning instead toward themes: her bold sexuality (“Erotica,” staged in a boxing ring, and “Justify My Love,” staged as a near orgy); her search for love (a salacious “Hung Up,” and the fan favorite “Bad Girl”); her rugged defiance (the perennial cowboy-themed standout “Don’t Tell Me”). She peppered the show with references to previous tours and videos, but skipped obvious choices (“Papa Don’t Preach,” “Express Yourself”) in favor of the glitchy 007 theme “Die Another Day” and a pointed acoustic cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

The show’s most spectacular number was “Like a Prayer,” which she sang on a dramatic spinning carousel that held shirtless dancers striking poses that mimicked Christ's crucifixion. The remix’s propulsive bass provided tension, and a quick cut to Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s “Unholy” underscored the original track’s enduring influence.

Madonna has always fixed her sights on what’s next, but the artists who have followed her have chosen different paths. This year alone, two women decades her junior turned yesteryear into big business: Taylor Swift has been delving into her prior album cycles onstage, and Beyoncé played stadium shows inspired by styles of dance music that date back before her birth.

Madonna has never before indulged in nostalgia, and at this concert, it was clear why. In the ’80s she was rewiring expectations for what a pop career could accomplish. In the ’90s, she was testing how explicitly she could express her desires. In the 2000s, she was finding fresh freedom on the dance floor. In the 2010s, she was bringing new voices into her orbit. But on a tour celebrating the past, it’s impossible to ignore the passage of time. There is less future stretched out before Madonna now, and it’s unclear how she will reckon with it.

Until recently, her groundbreaking career was a demonstration of seemingly impossible physical strength. But near the end of the 2020 theater shows supporting her last studio album, “Madame X,” serious injuries took a toll. Madonna’s once inexhaustible body failed her just days before the Celebration Tour was scheduled to start in July, and she was hospitalized with an infection.

At Barclays, she let her dancers do much of the heavy lifting, though she still handled choreography — mostly in heels — for the majority of the show. At times, skipping down the runway with her blonde hair flying behind, she looked like the carefree upstart who flipped the pop world on its head. At others, a hair behind the beat, she looked like a stage veteran who has endured decades of punishing physical labor.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it this summer, but here I am,” she told the crowd early on. She saved space in the show for those who didn’t: In a curious tribute to Michael Jackson, a silhouette of the two superstars dancing together was projected as a mix of “Billie Jean” and “Like a Virgin” played. Someone dressed like Prince mimed soloing on one of his signature guitars at the end of “Like a Prayer.” And, movingly, Madonna honored her son David’s birth mother alongside her own when he joined her for “Mother and Father.”

David strummed a guitar to that melancholy song from “American Life” as well as to “La Isla Bonita”; her daughter Mercy accompanied her on a grand piano for “Bad Girl.” But otherwise, Madonna eschewed a band for this tour, instead using tracks edited by her longtime collaborator Stuart Price. The choice removed some of the theater of the show and put extra pressure on Madonna’s vocals, which started out raspy and occasionally strained. (For what it’s worth, the crowd didn’t hit the high notes of “Crazy for You,” either.)

Madonna, long a noted perfectionist, seemed looser and chattier throughout the night. Several pauses to address the audience were dotted throughout the set, and she was elated during a playful tribute to the ballroom scene she spotlighted in “Vogue,” which featured her 11-year-old daughter Estere owning the catwalk. For “Ray of Light,” Madonna looked like she had a blast dancing in the confines of the rectangular lift that ferried her above the crowd.

Madonna has long known the power of video, and the most effective encapsulation of her impact came in a montage before the show’s penultimate act that stitched together headlines and news reports about her unparalleled ability to shock the world. “The most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around,” she said in a 2016 speech highlighting how she’s continually had to battle the twin scourges of sexism and ageism.

New Yorkers, she noted onstage, don’t like to be told what to do. But perhaps finally pausing to look back has showed her another path forward: her well-earned legacy era. “Something is ending,” she sang in “Nothing Really Matters” as she swooped around the stage alone, “and something begins.”

Caryn Ganz is The Times’s pop music editor. More about Caryn Ganz

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Madonna’s ‘Celebration’ Show Is Very Late but Worth the Wait at U.S. Tour Launch: Concert Review

By Ramin Setoodeh

Ramin Setoodeh

Co-Editor-in-Chief

• Ryan Gosling on Nearly Turning Down Ken, Singing Live at the Oscars and Wanting a ‘Beach-Off’ Over Those ‘Barbie’ Snubs 2 months ago
• Madonna’s ‘Celebration’ Show Is Very Late but Worth the Wait at U.S. Tour Launch: Concert Review 4 months ago
• Sofia Coppola’s ‘Priscilla’ Rocks Venice With 7-Minute Standing Ovation as Priscilla Presley Cries 7 months ago

Hello, Brooklyn. Is Madonna in the house? It’s after 10 p.m. on Wednesday night, and the Material Girl is nowhere to be found on the first hometown stop of her career-retrospective “Celebration” tour.

Photos: Ricardo Gomez

The vibe inside the Barclays Center had started off with puffs of pot smoke and Fire Island-circuit, party-ready club music curated by DJ Honey Dijon. Costumed fans decked out in glitter, Madonna T-shirts, hoodies and even a “Like a Virgin” wedding dress grew increasingly impatient. It’s a power move for a stadium artist to keep his or her concert-goers waiting … and waiting … and waiting, and it’s certainly one that Madonna is (in)famous for. But this isn’t the ’90s, and New York is no longer the city that never sleeps. People were starting to get drowsy. Those gummies had started to kick in.   

Finally, at 10:45 p.m., the evening’s host, Bob the Drag Queen, sauntered onstage in a pink Marie Antoinette-like ruffled gown. As he invited fans to travel back to 1978 New York City, with “Madonna at 19 years old,” he declared, “This is not just a show. This is not just. This is not just a partttty. It’s a celebration, bitches!” 

The song, and the dance, felt apt: Madonna may have dodged fate only very recently. She addressed the bacterial infection in a rambling speech to fans, between songs, early on, standing next to an actor dressed as Madonna, meant to represent her as a young woman.

“Oh my god,” the real Madonna said. “It’s so great to be back in New York. You have no idea. The enthusiasm, the joy, it’s just coming out of my pores. It’s amazing. Touch me right now. Please someone, touch me.” Madonna, at 65, looked at her younger doppelganger. “Touch me. Yes. Thank you. So uh — the relief. People can speak my language, the language of c–t! Uh, I don’t know where to begin. First of all, no one is more surprised that I have made it this far than me. Yeah, four decades, motherfuckers! And I got to tell you, I didn’t think I was going to make it this summer, but here I am. Thank you for having me. Thank you for standing by me, for your support, your love.

“You don’t understand — the love from a New Yorker is like making a big fat smelly rat come up to you and put your arms around you: ‘I made it.’ I’m not comparing you guys to rats,” she continued. “I know that sounded weird. First of all — I mean, fifth of all, I want you to meet myself. Have you met myself? She was little bit shy back in the day. Let’s see if she’s ticklish.” The real Madonna poked the other Madonna, hugged her, and then seemed peeved to be sharing the spotlight, so she ordered her to sit down. 

Madonna, after all, doesn’t co-headline with anyone — not even herself. But for all that she’s changed music, she may, today, be chasing the descendants her fame helped create. “The Celebration Tour” is coming at the end of the year defined by three other superstar artists on the road — Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour, which became the first concert in history to gross $1 billion globally; Beyonce’s “Renaissance”; and SZA’s “SOS” tour. In all honesty, “The Celebration Tour” doesn’t fall in the same league as those transcendent fan experiences — and it’s also no match for Madonna’s greatest concert of this century, 2005’s “Confessions” tour, based on her tenth studio album “Confessions on a Dance Floor.”

But Madonna is still Madonna, and that’s probably enough even if the “Celebration” show doesn’t always stick the landing. Throughout the night, there are too many costume changes to count, yet Madonna is best when she puts the music front and center, focusing on her vocals instead of trying to outdance her competition. The booming acoustics inside the Barclays Center may have also thrown her off her game, as Madonna asked fans if they could hear her, and she complained at one point, “It’s an echo bowl in here.”

It’s enough to make you pine for a time when New Yorkers could really stay out all night dancing to Madonna on a weeknight. At least, among those willing to wait to be transported, the indestructible Madonna could give us a ride in her time machine.

• Celebration Intro/Nothing Really Matters
• Into The Groove
• I Love New York/Burning Up
• Open Your Heart
• Live To Tell
• Like A Prayer
• Act of Living For Love/The 90’s (Interlude)
• Erotica/Papa Don’t Preach
• Justify My Love/Fever
• Hung Up On Tokischa
• Vogue (Estere’s Ball)
• Human Nature/Crazy For You
• The Beast Within (Interlude)
• Die Another Day
• Don’t Tell Me
• Mother And Father
• Survive/La Isla Bonita/Argentina
• I Don’t Search I Find (Interlude)
• Bedtime Story
• Ray of Light
• Billie Jean vs. Like A Virgin
• GMAYL/Bitch I’m Madonna

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'Show-Stopping Spectacle' Or 'Lacking A Little Punch'? What The Critics Are Saying About Madonna's Tour

Contributor

Madonna is finally back where she belongs, taking to the stage over the weekend to kick off her highly-anticipated Celebration Tour.

The 35-city tour was announced earlier this year, but the Queen of Pop was forced to delay the start of it due to a serious bacterial infection that landed her in hospital for several days back in June.

But Madonna was on fine form as she began her show at London’s O2 Arena on Saturday night, where she played to 20,000 fans, and also spoke candidly her recent health scare .

Taking fans through her 40-year career, her set list included her most recognisable hits such as Into The Hollywood Groove, Holiday and Like A Prayer.

In addition, her children joined her on staged, Estere was voguing whilst her son David played the guitar.

OKAY ESTERE IS GIVING!!! MADONNA I LIVE FOR THIS BALLROOM SCENE YOU HAVE IN THE CELEBRATION TOUR! pic.twitter.com/lzGWdNwzJ4 — amri🐝 (@saintslaurentz) October 15, 2023

Madonna’s son, David Banda, paying homage to the Late Prince during Opening Night of #TheCelebrationTour . London, Oct. 14, 2023. pic.twitter.com/Hxv6kxesqm — Drew S. (@DrewSrivanlop) October 15, 2023

The general consensus from critics so far has largely been positive, but they have honed in on some pain points – h ere’s what they all had to say...

Guardian (4/5 stars)

“[...] You could argue that the show loses its sense of narrative thread – you’d be hard-pushed to describe a segue that jams together Human Nature, Crazy for You and Justify My Love with readings from the Book of Revelation as anything other than puzzling – but what it lacks in clarity, it makes up for with its setlist.

“You could see the Celebration tour as a capitulation, an artist in her 60s finally admitting her history is what really matters. Equally, you could view it as Madonna playing to her strengths: as Like a Virgin and Ray of Light boom out over the O2, those strengths seem very strong indeed.”

Evening Standard (4/5 stars)

“Though the narrative of the show, a journey through Madonna’s life, started out strong, it weakened and became more confused as time went on. Technical difficulties early on also forced Madonna to muddle her way through a prolonged bout of stand-up for almost ten minutes.

“Still, it frankly wouldn’t be a proper Madonna show without a few surprise jokes about trading sexual favours for hot showers early in her career, nor a couple of musical curveballs. Forty years at the top of pop, and she’s still unpredictable as ever.”

“The concert was billed as Madonna’s first-ever greatest hits set and, on that front, it did not disappoint.

“Not every moment was so successful. The Bjork-penned Bedtime Stories felt superfluous, and did we really need a second version of Justify My Love (the obscure Beast Within remix, which quotes extensively from the Book of Revelations) when songs like Express Yourself and Frozen were discarded as snippets? The narrative, too, began to meander. After a strong autobiographical structure in the opening act, later sequences were hard to decipher.”

Independent 5/5 stars

“The O2’s sound system failed during the song, but the hitch – which the singer shrugged off – only added to the vintage vibe.

“The show’s high point arrives courtesy of an achingly beautiful rendition of 1986’s Live to Tell, during which Madonna floats above our heads as the screens fill with images of the many talented gay men lost to the Aids epidemic.”

“Tonight, the Madonna show goes on and, after that early hitch, it simply doesn’t stop, laying on spectacle after spectacle and show-stopper after show-stopper. With so many stages, set-ups and costume changes, you could probably catch this gig half a dozen times and still not spot everything (and many of this crowd, teetering on the brink of delirium ever since the Madonna pop-up store opened in the adjoining mall this morning, seem set to do just that).

“This show is proof that there is no such thing as too much Madonna. True, the lack of a live band occasionally makes things lack a little punch.”

Rolling Stone

“For all of the genius production masterminded tonight by her creative director, the renowned producer Stuart Price, there are sections of the show that feel overwrought and, at one point, entirely misguided.

“The overwrought comes in a bizarre video interlude of The Beast Within, which sees flames engulf the stage and Madonna’s dancers looking like they’ve come straight from the set of Dune 2. It’s an undeniable spectacle, but it feels overlong.

“Here’s a true icon who, for the most part at least, is determined to show that her throne as the Queen of Pop remains roundly intact. A celebration, well and truly delivered.”

Daily Mail 4/5 stars

“If this show has a problem it’s that it’s rather too long, too self-indulgent – and has too many pretentious interludes...”

Madonna’s Celebration Tour continues at The O2 on Wednesday.

More In Entertainment

Madonna tells fans it is 'a miracle that I’m alive' at Celebration tour concert

NEW YORK – “No one is more surprised that I have made it this far than me. I didn’t think I was gonna make it this summer, but … here I am.”

With that address after the first three songs of her Celebration Tour, Madonna bridged 40 years of pop stardom with one very frightening health incident in June, a blunt assessment of both her atypical longevity and the fragility of her – or anyone’s − future.

A week after concluding a 27-show outing through Europe with her career-spanning production, Madonna , 65, reactivated her elaborate tour Wednesday at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, the first of three sold-out shows at the venue as part of her North American sprint through April.

Neither age nor consideration will sway Madonna’s stubborn fixation with taking the stage at a time when most concertgoers are preparing for work the next morning – 10:50 on this night. Plenty of fans who have experienced her aversion to punctuality on previous tours have vowed to stay away, but forgiveness is quick among Madonna devotees, a colorful crowd dotted with feather boas, sequins and corsets who packed the venue to the rafters.

Though Madonna has never been one for nostalgia and cozy reminiscing, she is also shrewd enough to note the popularity of her younger peers unspooling their musical stories (so far) with stadium blowouts.

If anyone deserves a bow in the spotlight, it’s the undisputed Queen of Pop. She bulldozed every adversity after moving to New York from Detroit at 19, circumvented her vocal limitations with crafty originality and hustle, developed into an ace businesswoman and musical tastemaker, and remains an inspiration for many.

Madonna doesn’t need to be out there, wonky left knee sheathed in a sleeve , teetering atop chairs and skipping through a glistening “Open Your Heart” with her nimble posse of dancers or gliding over the crowd in a Plexiglas box to sing, quite robustly, the lovely “Live to Tell.”

But tell her she can’t do something and she’d likely reference her 2015 hit, played near the end of this two-hour-plus spectacle: “Bitch, I’m Madonna.”

Madonna Celebration Tour: See the setlist for her iconic career-spanning show

Madonna turns reflective: ‘I feel like I’m one of the lucky ones’

This Celebration Tour was almost anything but triumphant after Madonna spent several days in the ICU this summer because of a severe bacterial infection, which prompted the postponement of her North American dates until now.

Her elation at being back on stage was unmistakable not only through her comments −“You have no idea the enthusiasm, the joy, coming out of my pores,” she said before strapping on a guitar to play “I Love New York” for the first time this tour – but through her movements.

An onstage camera captured refreshingly real shots of her cavorting with her team during “Holiday” (with a bit of Chic’s “I Want Your Love” nestled into the groove) and her “Vogue” routine of judging her stylishly clad dancers – including daughter Estere − as they sashayed down the lighted stage runway was a goofy giggle-fest.

One of the most poignant moments in a show packed with visuals including a spinning circular stage − tiered to evoke memories of the wedding cake from her iconic 1984 MTV VMAs performance – unique video scrolls that rolled open in various spots around the arena and pyramids of lasers, came with Madonna and a guitar.

Shortly after engaging in the thumbs-hooked-through-belt-loops dance routine for the stuttering country-pop of “Don’t Tell Me,” Madonna again chatted with fans.

“It’s a miracle that I’m alive,” she said. “I feel like I’m one of the lucky ones. … Let’s take a moment to be grateful.”

With that, she asked the crowd to turn on their phone lights and dived into a deliberate rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” her voice unaccompanied save for the song’s basic guitar chords.

It was simple, yet stirring, and it made for an unconventional segue into “La Isla Bonita” – with son David Banda on guitar – which, weirdly, worked.

Madonna is still selling sex, but does it have the same effect?

Madonna has always used sex to not only titillate, but also to needle her critics. Even four decades into a career, she isn’t going to limit the raunch factor in her shows.

It’s debatable whether the simulated masturbation on a red velvet bed with a “Vogue”-era doppelganger – staged between the hypnotic chug of “Erotica” and “Justify My Love” – was provocative or a shrug-inducing callback to her 1990 Blond Ambition tour, when those salacious simulations almost got her arrested.

In her red-and-black negligee and knee-high black boots, Madonna cut a seductive figure. But watching her get devoured in a sea of writhing bodies and pet and kiss her topless male and female dancers before a tone-shifting “Hung Up” wasn’t nearly as stimulating as her artful lighted-carousel presentation of “Like a Prayer,” another classic creation of agitation in its time (1989) that now feels subdued.

Madonna has traversed so many musical styles, birthed so many trends whether via fashion, song or attitude, and shattered more glass ceilings that nothing short of a six-hour show coupled with a documentary would fully illuminate the archives of her career.

But The Celebration Tour is an effective commemoration of a woman who has fulfilled every accomplishment yet still possesses a scrappy drive.

“It’s important to never forget where you came from,” Madonna said from the stage. “Always remember the struggle.”

More: Madonna turns 65, so naturally we rank her 65 best songs

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Madonna Live in London: Queen of Pop Shows Why She Still Owns the Crown

By Nick Reilly

Nick Reilly

There’s a moment late on in the first night of  Madonna ‘s Celebration Tour when the Queen of Pop, acoustic guitar in hand, leads The O2 Arena in a solo rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s seminal disco hit ‘I Will Survive.’

It would be a fitting choice for any 65-year-old pop star who can still play a staggering six nights at an arena that fits 20,000 people, but for Madonna , the song seems even more appropriate. This tour, a career-spanning look back at 40 years at the top, was originally set to kick off in North America earlier this year, but a bacterial infection forced her to put the dates on ice. Speaking to the crowd, she pulls no punches when discussing the seriousness of the situation she faced.

It means that tonight’s show, a masterclass in arena production, feels an even more significant milestone for her.

She opens with “Nothing Really Matters,” performed for the first time since 1999, decked out in a throne and flanked by an army of backing dancers, before going straight into 1982’s “Everybody” and the iconic dance-pop of “Get Into the Groove.” So far, so good, it seems. But not for Madonna.

There’s a ten-minute interlude as the singer complains of technical issues, which proves the perfect opportunity for the singer to recall her early days as a broke New York star who would, she explains, head back to the homes of “cute guys” if it meant the chance to have a wash. “Blowjobs for showers,” she concisely puts it, while geed up by support act and close friend Bob The Drag Queen.

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From this point, it’s a run of hits that proves the show’s high point. “Like A Prayer” – complete with a gaggle of topless dancers on a rotating platform – is enough to send Sam Smith’s prudish critics to their immediate graves, while the canvas canopy of The O2 feels fit to blast off with the sheer energy that is devoted to ‘Hung Up’, the entire room transformed into a joyful 70s NYC disco.

But not all of the show hits with the same heft. For all of the genius production masterminded tonight by her creative director, the renowned producer Stuart Price, there are sections of the show that feel overwrought and, at one point, entirely misguided.

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Much like the singer herself, tonight’s opening show is two hours of overblown, indulgent fun that refuses to dance to the beat of anyone else’s drum. She owns this mantra herself late on, with a montage that looks back at all the detractors – Cher to name but one – who have slung insults at the Madonna throughout her career.

After all, she’s the one still standing after 40 years. In a year when Taylor Swift’s own look back at her career is proving the biggest tour in a generation, here’s a true icon who, for the most part at least, is determined to show that her throne as the Queen of Pop remains roundly intact. A celebration, well and truly delivered.

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Madonna review – a triumphant romp through her many moods

O2 Arena, London With no band, an entourage of dancers and one very attentive avatar, Madonna serves up four decades of greatest hits in a multimedia spectacle that ranges from steamy to sombre

“H ave you met me?” asks Madonna drily, a handful of songs into the third night of her Celebration tour. It’s a rhetorical question, given the singer’s hit-saturated 40-year career, her enduring status as the highest-grossing touring female performer of all time, and all the fans who have come in cosplay – not to mention the silly money being charged for VIP tickets. Having long resisted performing greatest-hits sets in favour of staging new work, Madonna recently relented, perhaps prey to a retrospective mood. Since about 2019, she has been trying to mount a self-directed biopic that is now on ice , its energies redirected to charting her career across 78 worldwide dates.

Madonna isn’t just wryly referring to her fame tonight, though. She makes the quip standing next to an avatar of her younger self, a dancer whose face is disconcertingly blurred by a see-through mask. “I’m proud of her,” says Madonna to howls of approval, “she didn’t listen to the naysayers.”

Throughout a two-hour show that romps through her many moods with the aid of impressive multimedia stagecraft and a profusion of dancers, the singer’s doppelganger makes significant cameos. None is more brain-swivelling than when Madonna and her avatar get very steamy with one another on a red velvet bed for Erotica , taking the concept of self-love to uncanny new valleys.

If, according to Philip Larkin, sex began in 1963 between the end of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover ban “and the Beatles’ first LP”, you could argue, at a stretch, that female pleasure began 20 years after that with Madonna’s 1983’s Burnin’ Up (here delivered in a raw, punky form, recalling the time she performed at CBGB’s in New York). That sense of female sexual agency was consolidated by 1984’s explosive Like a Virgin (not used to advantage tonight) and Material Girl (bizarrely left off the set list), climaxing with 1990’s Justify My Love (pretty much a simulated orgy).

There are other Madonnas here as well: the gig’s compere, Bob the Drag Queen, sashays around looking like Marie Antoinette, a nod to Madonna’s look for the 1990 MTV awards . Other key historical Madonna looks are echoed in the dancers’ wardrobes, making her legion.

Significantly, this is a corps de ballet into which Madonna channels not just her historical moves – the dance routines to early songs such as Holiday quote period-perfect 1980s shapes – but her own physicality. If Celebration is an often glorious marinade in Ciccone’s special sauce, that sauce has a bittersweet tang from time to time. Madonna’s heroic choreography has long been a hallmark of her output, but now she wears a leg brace under fishnets. Her movements, though fluent – she walks on chairs, rides dancers and sashays about – are often more gestural than acrobatic. It’s no criticism: a serious bacterial infection delayed the start of this tour, so all 20,000 attendees are grateful she is here at all. Madonna covers Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive , but given the show’s montages of old newspaper cuttings (“Hussy!”), video quotes and validatory hurrahs, she could just have easily chosen Frank Sinatra’s My Way or Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien.

The enjoyment baseline for Celebration is, then, high: many, many great hits, often rendered in familiar ways, thanks to a band-free production. Live instruments are dotted like confetti: son David Banda’s guitar for Mother and Father ; daughter Mercy James’s piano on Bad Girl .

The presence of Madonna’s children is less cloying than you’d think, but there are a few passages where this artist’s choices are more baffling. The avatar’s blank face seems creepy. A celebratory Michael Jackson montage, in which Like a Virgin is merged with Jackson’s Billie Jean, feels a curious choice, given Madonna’s impassioned speech about the suffering of children in the eastern Mediterranean conflict. Far too much time is given over to an interlude featuring The Beast Within , a Book of Revelation-quoting remix of Justify My Love. Its confused desert dance-offs provide an overabundance of styling and little of substance.

Madonna is on much firmer ground when she is rattling the Catholic church’s cage, not quoting from its hymn sheets, or paying homage to the LGBTQ+ community. During one mesmerising segment, half-naked dancers in loin cloths and leather masks hang as though crucified inside a set of carouselling windows. It’ll be interesting to see what Italy makes of this “gimp Jesus” sequence come Milan.

Interpolating the Queens remix of Beyoncé’s Break My Soul, Vogue presents an opportunity for play – an extended ballroom competition in which Madonna (and tonight, Diplo) score the dancers as they cavort up the runway, reiterating Madonna’s allyship to the ballroom scene ( even if some have felt differently ).

Holiday ends on a sombre note, with Madonna draping her coat over the inert body of a dancer. It’s the 80s and a storm is about to hit. Live to Tell features images of figures who lost their lives to HIV/Aids.

The vast screens surrounding the stage on three sides then split into smaller pictures, then smaller still, counting the many victims of the disease almost ad infinitum. Someone in the crowd releases one red balloon. It a genuinely moving acknowledgment of the suffering that went hand in hand with the decade of excess – and of this Material Girl’s still-compelling emotional range.

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