Madonna In Argentina – The 14th Anniversary
October 30 2007 marked the 14th anniversary of the first Madonna visit to Buenos Aires.
As part of her fourth world tour, “The Girlie Show“, Madonna visited latin american cities for the first time in her career, being this, obviously, her first visit to Argentina.
The Queen of Pop arrived to the country in a flight coming from Bayamon, Puerto Rico where she performed her show the night before. Madonna arrived in Buenos Aires together with her brother Christopher Ciccone, her vocalists Donna and Nicki, and her dancers, as well as her assistants.
In Buenos Aires, the then-president Carlos Menem had been receiving requests from part of the conservative parties, who wanted to ban the Madonna show from taking place in the monumental River Plate stadium, because they considered the performance obscene and against the morals and good taste – but things went ahead anyway. Thanks to anything step to bigger; Argentina’s Congress ruled that minors of 13 years old of age could attend the show accompained by a responsible adult.
Madonna and her team were staying at the Hyatt Hotel. A few times Madonna came out of her room’s balcony to greet the more than 500 fans that were standing out there to see their queen.
She thanked them for being there under the pouring rain by sending them kisses and throwing little paper airplanes at them. In spite of the constant protests against the first show of Madonna in Buenos Aires coming from conservative parties, the only thing that was threatening the show in River Plate was the heavy storm of October 29th. That was the only reason why the show got canceled and rescheduled for the 31st of October.
So the second concert of Saturday October 30 became the first concert Madonna held in Argentina’s River Plate stadium before an audience of more than 80.000 people. There were also many celebrities among them. In that show Madonna uses all her talents by singing songs off her 1992 Erotica album as well as classic hits. One of the most successful sing-along songs of that night was ‘La Isla Bonita’, during which the stadium of River Plate seemed to be blowing up with the fan’s enthusiasm.
At the end of the show Madonna came out dressed up with a T-shirt of the Argentinean football team, to perform her song Everybody. Unfortunately this shirt had on a logo on of tv channel “Canal 13”, rival of the “Canal 11” at that time. Because of this, Canal 11 decided not to broadcast that show on tv, even if they had an exclusive contract with Madonna. They later gave Madonna another football t-shirt with their logo for the next show.
The second night, Sunday October 31, Madonna offers a new show in Buenos Aires with 100.000 people attending and that filled the stadium’s maximum capacity. The highlight of the night was when Madonna sang a short acapella portion of the song Don’t Cry For Me Argentina for the delight of her local fan’s. This way Madonna concludes her first (and only by now) tour of concerts in Argentina.
Madonna would return three years later to the country, but this time to play her more ambitious film project and the one that consecrates her as an actress of Hollywood: Evita, the musical of Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the legendary actress’s, politics’ and First Lady’s fantastic life, Eva Duarte De Perón.
Written and submitted by Martin Aravena from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Thanks, Martin!