The Rebel Heart Tour Press Reports & Reviews [Europe]

[groovyguy 63,864]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3342102/Madonna-straddles-celeb-superfan-Graham-London-gig-chatshow-host-help-floor-racy-routine.html

Madonna straddles celeb superfan Graham Norton at her London gig... but chat show host has to help her up off the floor after racy routine

Her last performance at the O2 in London made headlines all around the world earlier this year.

 

And on Tuesday night, Madonna returned to the scene of her famous tumble as she put on a lively performance at the iconic stadium as part of the first UK show of her Rebel Heart world tour.

 

However this time round, the Queen of Pop was joined on stage by celebrity superfan Graham Norton, who looked absolutely delighted to share the limelight.

Later crawling under his legs, the 57-year-old songstress required the help of all her backing dancers to lift her up from the ground.

 

That wasn't the only outrageous moment of the night, with Madonna taking to the stage in a variety of outfits which were sure to get people talking.

Steady on: However this time round, the Queen of Pop was joined on stage by celebrity superfan Graham Norton, who was seen helping her up
 

Singing sensation: Madonna was dressed in a glamorous glittery bodysuit, while the TV star kept it chic in black trousers and a plain white shirt
 

Stealing the limelight: The two stars appeared to be having a wonderful time on stage 


Doing her thing: Madonna jumped up on the British TV presenter and tried to wrap her legs around his waist as she put on a wild performance for fans
 

She received huge cheers from the crowd when her trailing pink cape was pulled off without a hitch by two dancers. 

 

It was a far cry from the February incident in which Madonna struggled to undo her flowing Armani cape and the pop superstar was accidentally pulled down a set of steps by one of her dancers.

 

The singing sensation sang new material from her latest album as well as classic hits including Material Girl, before finishing with a rendition of Holiday.

 

 

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He's got swagger: Graham, 52, surprised the London crowds with his dance moves

 

 

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Supporting act: Madonna happily let the chat show host steal the spotlight as she sang her songs

 

 

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Feeling Norty: The pop star was seen gyrating along the dance floor 

 

 

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Putting on a show! She later crawling under his legs during the raunchy performance

 

 

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A treat: After the energetic stint, The American star was seen handing the TV presenter a banana 

 

Rita Ora joins Madonna on stage in Berlin gets Unapologetic

 

 

 

 

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Madonna has been keeping her international following entertained during her mammoth Rebel Heart tour, which has so far grossed $46million.

The superstar has been putting on a real show, joined by a host of celebrity pals including Katy Perry and Rita Ora, who is the face of Madonna's Material Girl clothing line, which she shares with her daughter Lourdes.

Last month, the Hot Right Now hitmaker joined Madonna on stage during a date on her Rebel Heart tour in Berlin - in which the saucy songstress spanked her younger counterpart.

Discussing their kinky on-stage antics, Rita revealed during an appearance on Alan Carr: Chatty Man: 'Madonna does this thing where she gives you five seconds to tell you what you want to do on stage, which really isn't much time. She drags you around everywhere.' 

 

 

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What a night: Graham was no doubt really pleased to join the star on stage

 

 

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So flashy: Dressed in a sparkly number, Madonna proudly showed off her toned figure to perfection

 

 

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Bold and fierce: The sizzling dress, complete with a short hemline and fringed detail, drew attention to her toned curves

 

 

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Bold move: That wasn't the only outrageous moment of the night, with Madonna taking to the stage in a variety of outfits which were sure to get people talking

 

 

 

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Making it perfect: She received huge cheers from the crowd when her trailing pink cape was pulled off without a hitch by two dancers - the star also wore a stunning Lilly e Violetta scarf

 

 

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Hitting all the right notes: The singing sensation sang new material from her latest album as well as classic hits including Material Girl, before finishing with a rendition of Holiday

 

 

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A success: Madonna has been keeping her international following entertained during her mammoth Rebel Heart tour, which has so far grossed $46million

 

 

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[groovyguy 63,864]

Madonna brings 'Rebel Heart' tour to London

LONDON - Pop star Madonna performed to thousands of fans in London on Tuesday night on the first of two nights of her “Rebel Heart†tour in the British capital.

Watch video clip @ http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/12/02/us-music-madonna-idUSKBN0TL20L20151202?feedType=RSS&feedName=entertainmentNews

 

The 57-year old sang a mix of chart-toppers from her 30-year long career as well as new songs from her "Rebel Heart" album. She also played the electric guitar on a rock-inspired remix of her 1983 hit "Burning Up".

 

Madonna performed alongside a troupe of dancers, dressed in a range of provocative and traditional outfits.

 

"Rebel Heart" is the pop star's first album since 2012's "MDNA". She kicked off her international tour in Montreal in September.

[groovyguy 63,864]

Google Translated:

 

http://www.nu.nl/muziek/4177742/madonna-met-paaldansende-nonnen-in-ziggo-dome.html

 

Madonna with pole dancing nuns in Ziggo Dome

 

The delicious evening had come for fans of Madonna, because the Queen Of Pop gave Pakjesavond her first of two concerts at the Ziggo Dome.

 

Concert organizer Mojo Concerts warned fans before the concert to be aware that Madonna might not be able to keep strictly to the previously reported start time. That statement does not appear unfounded, because the pop icon indeed start an hour late. Only at 0:15 pm, the diva left the stage again.

 

In the intervening two hours but Madonna makes for plenty of entertainment. It is almost three and a half years since Madonna for the last time seen in the Netherlands, when she made her debut in the then newly opened Ziggo Dome.That concert felt like one long video clip. Although spectacular and amazing, but directed to the millisecond.

 

In this world tour, following her this spring released album Rebel Heart, Madonna let the reins a little more to celebrate. In relation to the MDNA Tour from 2012 the decor is less impressive and innovative, but it is amply compensated with exuberant clothes and energetic choreography. Moreover, she sings a lot more live.

 Madonna in the Ziggo Dome

 

Samurai Clothing

When opener Iconic, the audience stared at the bloodied face of boxer Mike Tyson. Madonna descends on stage in a cage while surrounded by geishas and male dancers in samurai garb. Her old pophitje Burning Up is transformed into rock track, which Madonna accompanies himself on electric guitar.

Madonna kicks as ever against sacred cows when Holy Water and Devil Prayperformed. The audience sees scantily clad dancers with pole dancing nuns caps to large crosses and later down the Madonna with a nepdoornenkrans ornamented head of one of her dancers in her crotch before she ends up straddling a table.

 

Controversy

This first set is promising for those hoping for more controversy, but the rest of the show is considerably braver. We see Madonna and her entourage do strongly sexually explicit moves in a 50s-setting for the song Body Shop, while moments later very sweet TrueBlue is sung. The stunning staircase scene during Heartbeat City evokes memories of Westside Story.

 

In the next block Madonna brings the public in Latin American mood when she comes over as a bullfighter Living For Love. Between those festive Latin music's La Isla Bonita no stranger in our midst and as much fun is a medley of 80s -hits Dress You Up, Into The Groove and Lucky Star. The acoustic version of Secret may be there.

 

Marry 

More than during her last show the pop star makes contact with her audience."Do you know how many drinks you'll need to have a good time?" Madonna asked her fans. "Not one when you're with me!" During another song she bites a fan in his fingers and she throws a bouquet into the audience after she asked if anyone in the crowd who wants to marry her.

 

The finale is entirely in the style of the 20s and 30s. With edited versions of hits like Music and Material Girl Madonna takes back the crowd to the 'Jazz Age', including topless Josephine Baker lookalike. The icing on the cake was her breakthrough hit Holiday. Madonna knows anything less means than the previous time put a huge entertaining show.

[Breathless 5,286]

Great review!! Can't wait to hear Holiday - I think this will be the first "proper" Holiday version since BA tour!

[kesiak 3,049]

5 stars review of the London show from The Observer today:

 

Madonna review – mistress of sex, sacrilege and stairs

 

There is something strangely comforting in the blasphemous stage extension on this first night of Madonna’s UK tour. It’s a crucifix crowned by a heart that actually looks like the head of a penis.

 

Madonna’s is a Rebel Heart, after all, one that has long relished conflating the Passion of the Christ with the more lurid human urges the church fails to sublimate. “Things always get heated up when I get here,†Madonna jokes from her position on a stool near the tip of the glans, in one of many often spontaneous-sounding asides tonight.

 

This most famous of lapsed Catholics recently referred to the pontiff as “popey-wopey†on the Philadelphia leg of this tour, a show that finds Madonna returning to themes she (and we) know well: religion, sex, provocation, heartbreak, the romance of Spain. In short, it’s a little like 1989 all over again, when Madonna’s Like a Prayer video found the singer getting steamy with a black saint.

 

This time, Holy Water – to be perfectly clear, a Rebel Heart song about cunnilingus and vaginal juices, “Bless yourself and genuflectâ€, it goes – features pole-dancing nuns in their frillies. At the end, it finds Madonna and her many dancers in a tableau suggesting the Last Supper. Only it’s more like the Last Bacchanal, with all sorts of simulated sins of the flesh instead of dessert.

 

Madonna remains an equal opportunities blasphemer, however. Devil Pray – another Rebel Heart song, this one about the illusory spiritual fix provided by intoxicants – features dancers getting jiggy in other religious garb. More taboo-breaking? One of her female dancer goes topless for Candy Shop in the jazz cabaret section of the show, in tribute, surely, to Josephine Baker, the “Black Pearl†of 20s and 30s Paris (and a civil rights campaigner). If all this raunchy church-baiting seems a tiny bit quaint in an age so free from inhibition, there’s a fond, familiar feeling to Madonna still kicking it so old-school – at least for those of us who witnessed the first round.

 

That storied past looms delightfully large tonight, with many songs – plus a handful of interpolations – culled from Madonna’s imperial phase as well as her more recent, imperious one.

 

This greatest hits set (Like a Virgin! La Isla Bonita! Dress You Up! Who’s That Girl! Holiday!) is remixed with great skill, bouncing between the recent past, in which Madonna proclaims her own dominance like a rapper (the ultra-modern Iconic and Bitch I’m Madonna, set tonight in Japan, sounding totally convincing), and a lifetime ago (Burning Up, in a rock version that is probably the least excellent rescore of the night). True Blue on a ukulele? Charming – genuinely – especially after the shock-and-awe of the opening triptych, in which Madonna is cast as a rebel queen sprung from jail, leading a cadre of futurist medieval samurai.

 

Matador cape flowing, she re-enacts the staircase routine of her Brits stumble back in February – this time successfully, to huge cheers. HeartBreakCity, one of Rebel Heart’s less convincing songs, is performed on a spiral staircase (as though to prove, once again, to all staircases, that she is not afraid of them). It climaxes in a few lines from Love Don’t Live Here Anymore, and Madonna throwing a dancer off the top of the stairs – one of many breathtaking feats of physical theatre that you begin to take for granted at Madonna shows.

 

Matador cape flowing, she re-enacts the staircase routine of her Brits stumble – this time successfully, to huge cheers

Arena gigs usually feature interludes where the star gets changed and you can run to the bar while everyone else watches a video. Madonna’s interludes are as good as the main event. One costume change in particular finds seven dancers strapped to the top of tall, flexible poles, swaying precipitously. The tune booming out is Illuminati – a more modern bit of provocation, addressed to online conspiracy theorists.

 

Madonna herself is a splendid host tonight, if a little too obsessed with sex, even for Graham Norton’s liking. The TV star is a surprise guest for Unapologetic Bitch, and is himself surprised – to be proffered a banana and then told in great detail what he might do with it. Another routine goes slightly wrong when Madonna accidentally picks a non-English speaker called Pepe to catch her bouquet. These clunks are welcome, because the unscripted Madonna is unexpectedly revealing, as when she bosses Norton around. For all her love of Spanish, Madonna finds herself unable to deal with poor Pepe. She confides that she used to steal from the till at the bar where she worked, just to get the money for a ticket to London. “I just said ‘um’ twice, I sound like an idiot,†she chastises herself at one point.

 

Marking World Aids Day provides the chance for the star to remember those who have died – including “the entire family of my adopted son†– and for the most charismatic song of the night. Like a Prayer finds Madonna accompanied by Spanish guitar. The entire room is in the palm of her hand, like a string of rosary beads, 20,000 long.

[groovyguy 63,864]

'We will not bend to fear,' Madonna says of Paris attacks

http://news.yahoo.com/not-bend-fear-madonna-says-paris-attacks-044922225.html;_ylt=AwrXgyJVBWlWpEQAkQvQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByb2lvbXVuBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--

Paris (AFP) - Singer Madonna made an emotional appeal following attacks in Paris a month ago that killed 130, shouting "We will not bend down to fear!" during a concert in the French capital.

 

"I think of what happened almost four weeks ago now," the visibly emotional artist said. "The heart of Paris and the heart of France beats in the heart of each city."

 

She continued: "We are one heart and our heart can beat as one... The power of love is greater than the love of power.

 

"I came here when I was 20 and it was here, in Paris, that I decided to make music. Thank you Paris for planting that seed in my heart!"

 

Swathed in a French flag, she sang the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, bringing the concert-goers to their feet.

 

The star then moved to Place de la Republique, which has become an unofficial hub for mourners of the November 13 attacks, and sang a series of songs to a small crowd.

 

"It was inspiring, it was raw, it was real," said Pete Hall, a 45-year-old tourist from London who had just left Madonna's concert at Bercy when he saw on social media she was at the square in central Paris.

 

"She was paying her respects to Paris," he said.

 

Wearing a down jacket with a fur hood over her head and accompanied by her guitarist Monte Pittman, Madonna sang her hits "Like a Prayer" and "Ghosttown", as well as John Lennon's "Imagine", according to those who attended the impromptu concert.

 

"She wanted to pay tribute, she loves this city," Pittman told AFP. "It is magical. I will never forget this."

 

The November 13 attacks in Paris, which were carried out by the Islamic State group and were the deadliest ever in France, killed 130 people and left 350 others wounded.

 

Days after the bloodshed, Madonna paid a tearful tribute to the victims on stage by singing the classic French song "La vie en rose," accompanied only by a guitar, during a concert in Stockholm.

[groovyguy 63,864]

Google Translated:

https://robinstheater.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/madonna-rebel-heart-tour-een-ervaring/

 

MADONNA - REBEL HEART TOUR, AN EXPERIENCE!

The Queen of Pop did after three years Netherlands again. For years she global leader in the entertainment industry. Reason enough to visit this concert. The opening makes you forget that the same two hours late diva appeared on stage. The show, directly and is pleasing to the eye, because Madonna is known for her big dance acts and also came today can wander.

 

What: Madonna Rebel Heart tour Where: Ziggo Dome Amsterdam if the visa:December 5 By: Robin Streppel
 

This time she looks down on an army of rebels and descends into a cage, an entrance of phorate. The Mooves are sexy, something she still is. Madonna knows her audience to give an experience that is unforgettable. New repertoire mixes with her famous songs. She goes like a beast on the stage, already at the start, the slick moves along its energy in the opening "Ironic" on it. The most beautiful dancers finish it, with Madonna to extract directly from in any number. The dancers dance perfectly and are a feast for the eyes. The directing choices and choreographies are sexy. One example, are "Material Girl" Madonna with the men used as a toy, it does it for the way during her show. You see things you never saw before, such as the way of pole dancing in a spacer, where the dancers fly across the stage next.

 

Madonna is not known for her great vocal power, but why? This woman sings beautifully and ormed as the best. It seems that some big dance numbers were supported by a band, but it was certainly not a playback show. They will sound in an acoustic version of "La vie en Rose" which she sings beautifully warm a nice moment of calm in this whirlwind of a show!

 

Nobody fucks with Madonna, as she herself would say! Madonna gives an audience to experience.

 

5 stars!

[groovyguy 63,864]

Google Translated:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/musique/2015/12/10/03006-20151210ARTFIG00126-madonna-fait-vibrer-bercy-avec-la-marseillaise.php

 

Madonna thrilled with Bercy La Marseillaise

WE WERE Y - The Queen of Pop was December 9th at the scene of Bercy. Between tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks of November 13 and provocations, she delighted her fans.

 

Attend a concert of the Madonna is taking part in a real glitzy event. This December 9 perhaps more than ever. The Queen of Pop was on the stage of Paris-Bercy for a show of more than two hours. Superstar who knows how capricious, especially in Paris, could also decide to shorten his concert to make only a few pieces, fans would still have been delighted, proud to have in my hands a ticket that is - physically - gold.

 

Neither fear nor sighs, if not comfortable, Madonna was there, true to itself. She assured a sensational show. In the US certainly, but not without empathy and emotion. Provocative, the 57 year-old artist took the pose in Vogue, blasphemed with Like A Virgin and delighted our Hispanic share of the melody of La Isla Bonita. In the stands, Alexis, dealer, thirties, was invited by her boyfriend on the occasion of his birthday.Coming from Toulouse, they regain the Pink City stars in their eyes. "It was amazing, I do not regret having made ​​the round trip. I was so touched by the character, "he says, a broad smile on the face a few minutes after the interpretation ofHoliday came close this sensational show.

 

Clement, student svelte meanwhile stood a few meters from the Material Girl, her absolute idol. The young man was to be accompanied by his best friend. She eventually gave up, still traumatized by the attacks in Paris. She does not know what she missed. He is so excited that he thinks will offer a place for this Thursday, December 10th, when the French second concert of the tour Rebel Heart.

 

The tribute to victims of terrorist attacks

Madonna has always claimed his special relationship with France. "It is the first country after the United States in which I played, I want to say thank you," she recalls. So when it happens in France less than a month after the terrorist attacks that killed 130, the artist is necessarily very emotional.For the occasion, his son David, 9, offered the public its first stage with a recovery to the guitarRedemption Song by Bob Marley.

 

This interpretation then followed a poignant speech. "I think of those who fought for France, I think of those who died for their ideas. I like this France that has a great heart. Edith Piaf, Serge Gainsbourg, Charles Aznavour, JR, Jean-Paul Gautier, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Michel Audiard ... "she said.

 

"The heart of Paris was violently attacked, but the heart of Paris beats with that of all the cities and all countries," she continues.

 

A few minutes later, it was a masterful recovery La Marseillaise that rattled the walls of Bercy. The entire audience then stood up as one man.

 

 

Finally, the interpretation of La Vie en Rose by Madonna came close the gaping wound left by the attacks.

 

 

It was thought the tribute ended but it is on the Republic Square in Paris that the concert was actually completed. The artist spent part of the evening alongside Agnes Varda and his friend photographer JR. Near the makeshift memorial, she sang again very moved, Imagine by John Lennon. A hymn to peace.

[survivalartist 6,644]

http://www.reuters.com/video/2015/12/10/madonnas-impromptu-gig-at-paris-memorial?videoId=366630508#ovIhtsCccwzPe5Z8. 97

 

Madonna's impromptu gig at Paris memorial

9:22am EST - 01:13

Madonna sings John Lennon's ''Imagine'' in front of a makeshift memorial at the Place de la Republique in Paris. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).

Video length: 1:13

[groovyguy 63,864]

Google Translated:

http://www.parismatch.com/Culture/Musique/Hier-soir-a-Paris-Madonna-878925

LAST NIGHT IN PARIS ... MADONNA

Madonna was in Paris on Wednesday night as part of his "Rebel Heart Tour". 

For over thirty years, Madonna reigns over international pop, always occupying a throne yet regularly threatened by new generations of singers who willingly send grandma retired.But she is not ready to be expelled if it continues to produce shows of quality Rebel Heart Tour. This is the tenth round and stands out above with a new attitude, more cheerful and less arrogant Star.

 

As if the weight of years that had accumulated - failing to alter his physical - affect his character. Obviously, she began with forty five minutes late (it was worse) but once the opening is understood that there will be heavy. It appears locked in a cage that descends gently hangers. When she is released, it is to engage in a fight choreography with a dozen samurai armor in an atmosphere very "Game of Thrones." On the giant screen that lines the back stage (the other two are located on the side but do not project the show, but never close ups), spectacular videos - well above those illustrèrent his latest album - create interactive decorations and complementary to what is happening on stage.

Madonna in Paris Wednesday© Hélène Pambrun / Paris Match

For a few seconds we see many times Mike Tyson. The voice is perfect in this very dance number, which makes us understand that the playback tape running in support. And when the staging will be more sober and without choreography, so we really hear His voice, more fragile and touching. Here there is alternately a show and a concert.

 

"THANK YOU PARIS OF HAVING PLANTED THE SEED IN MY HEART"

 

All fantasies and obsessions "madoniennes' parade during the evening, crucifix, nuns in underwear, orgiastic recreation of the Last Supper of Christ but with lots of choreographic elegance. The show draws in what is done better elsewhere (Vegas, Cirque du Soleil, Crazy Horse) but keeping the Madonna identity. 

Madonna was in fine form at Bercy.© Hélène Pambrun / Paris Match

Rebel Tour Hart ranks among the greatest achievements of his career. Of course, wrapped in a tricolor, she speaks extensively of the attacks and the pain she had experienced."I was twenty when I came to Paris and here in Paris, I decided I was going to make music.Paris thank you for having planted the seed in my heart. "The audience launched into a thunderous Marseillaise after his first notes were played by the star by tapping the body (in this case his lower abdomen, what what you think? it is Madonna) and just before the final boost, Jean Paul Gauthier joined his friend on stage to dance with her ​​as a clumsy bear. After the show, Madonna traveled to the memorial site of the attacks of the Republic and are improvised an acoustic mini-concert where she sang "Ghosttown", "Imagine" and "Like a Prayer".

 

Set List

 

Iconic

Bitch I'm Madonna

Burning up

Holy Water

Pray Devil

Body Shop

True Blue

Deeper and deeper

HeartbreakCity

Like a Virgin

Living for Love

La Isla Bonita

Dress You Up

Redemption Song

Rebel Heart

Music

Candy Shop

Material Girl

Life in pink

Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend

Unapologetic Bitch

Holiday

Madonna on stageHélène Pambrun / Paris 

[Gargamel 8,775]

Madonna at Barclaycard Arena was provocative as ever

 

The superstar arrived on time,  performed a dazzling show and proved her career is far from over

 

 

What could be more Christmassy than pole-dancing nuns and lewd acts on the table of The Last Supper?

Oh, and ear-chomping boxer turned rapist Mike Tyson?

 

It could only mean one thing – singing superstar Madonna was in town and as provocative as ever, even at the age of 57.

 

A snarling Tyson appeared on a giant screen during the introduction to opening song Iconic, controversially declaring: ‘‘I’m somebody... I am beautiful.’’

 

Then lapsed Catholic Madonna began exploring the juxtaposition of sexuality and religion, which has been a familiar theme throughout her long career.

 

During the X-rated Holy Water, dancers in nuns’ habits and white frilly knickers gyrated on giant crucifixes, with Madonna defying her age by also giving us a twirl.

 

After that, Madonna provoked the Vatican some more in a sinful re-enactment of The Last Supper with 12 of her dancers, in which she appeared to be the dessert course.

 

Fans paid up to £200 for face value tickets for the sold-out show and got closer to their idol than ever before thanks to a runway shaped like a bow firing a heart-tipped arrow.

 

They had an anxious wait after a technical fault delayed the start of Madonna’s Manchester show on Monday by an hour, with the star having to cut her two-hour long set short.

 

Thankfully, the undisputed world champion of pop was on time in Brum and made a typically dramatic entrance, descending from the arena’s rooftop in a medieval spiked cage.

 

 

Strumming an electric guitar on her knees, Madonna turned back the clock for a rock version of Burning Up, her second single from before she was famous 32 years ago.

 

The stage was transformed into a garage for Body Shop and Madonna played the ukulele for a charming True Blue and a cover of Edith Piaf’s La Vie En Rose.

 

In a jaw-dropping climax to Heart Break City, a jilted Madonna pushed her undeserving lover off the top of a spiral staircase. ‘‘Nobody f***s with the queen,’’ she yelled.

 

For fan favourite Music, Madonna turned flapper in a 1920s routine which featured a topless female dancer, while for Unapologetic Bitch she danced with a young friend of her son - and spanked him.

 

The loudest cheer of the night came during Living for Love when Madonna managed to unclip her cape, unlike at this year’s Brits when she was yanked down some steps.

 

 

She was showcasing her 13th studio album, Rebel Heart, which explores her romantic and her rebellious sides in an array of genres including house, reggae, rap and gospel.

 

It’s Madonna’s least successful album and, unlucky for some in the arena, she chose to perform nine of its tracks, while another three were played during video interludes.

 

But Madonna kept fairweather fans happy with refreshed versions of a bunch of her biggest hits from the 80s, including La Isla Bonita, Material Girl and a joyous Like A Prayer.

 

There was an over-reliance on backing tracks for some of the more elaborately staged numbers, but when they pace was slowed Madonna proved how underrated she is as a singer.

 

 

Wrapped in a Union Flag, she ended the show with an energetic rendition of Holiday before being whisked away on a circus trapeze with barely enough time to wave goodbye.

 

It was a crowd-pleasing end to a dazzling show - and much more appropriate for the holiday season than some of her routines earlier in the evening.

 

Whatever you think of Madonna, you can’t deny that she’s worked tirelessly for her success and is the consummate professional, always putting on one hell of a show.

 

Indeed, perhaps the biggest ‘wow’ moment came when several dancers were strapped to the top of tall poles which swayed and bent at unfathomable angles above the audience.

 

But for all the theatrics, Madonna was most captivating when she was alone on the runway, singing Like A Virgin and Rebel Heart, two songs from opposite ends of her career.

 

And on this evidence, it’s a career that’s far from over.

 

Original article + press pictures gallery : http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/madonna-barclaycard-arena-provocative-ever-10613198

[groovyguy 63,864]

Review: Madonna, SSE Hydro, Glasgow

http://m.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/14158339.Review__Madonna__SSE_Hydro__Glasgow/

Keith Bruce's verdict: five stars.

 

Some of you perhaps thought the Queen of Pop was the girl who wouldn’t grow up, and was still out to shock and trade provocations with lasses less than half her age. Wise up, because the Rebel Heart show is the work of a woman who has shown no inclination to compromise over 30 years of work and would like to remind us of that.

 

We are ages, Madge and I, but I hadn’t seen her perform live since the Who’s That Girl tour visited Leeds Roundhay Park in 1986, an era she specifically recalled with a singalong acoustic version of the song and a thanks to her fans for supporting her over the past three decades – leading into her latest anthem Ghosttown, and the title-track of Rebel Heart. This show is a careful celebration of all things Madonna as well as a comprehensive plug for the new album, and if a retiral announcement would be as believable as Sinatra’s, it would still be a very fine biographical statement to go out on.

 

Split into four sections by stunning quality video and using the whole arena as no other has done, we ended up in a 20s speakeasy that was as much Josephine Baker as Sally Bowles and embraced Music and Material Girl, as well as a couple called Pierre and Stephen who caught her bouquet, and kilted lad called Jimmy. Before that we’d had a caped crusader segment with her physique revealed to be clad in a stunning toreador’s suit of lights, and lovely version of La Isla Bonita. The opening sequence dressed some of her dancers in wimples and tennis knickers and had them pole-dancing on crucifixes before a Last Supper tableau – even the liberal congregation of Cairns Kirk, Milngavie might have looked askance.

 

But it was the segment that followed it, with staging that recalled Greased Lightning and some panto audience-baiting, that revealed the show’s music-theatre heart. When Madonna says she’s a girl who works hard for her money, it ain’t no word of a lie. From her commitment to the ensemble – all stunning dancers – on Deeper and Deeper through to a virtuosic solo Like A Virgin to a pulsing industrial beat, this was a performance that was as much theatre as it was music, and owned the space.

 

Just to prove it, when they pulled the plug and the hard-hatted crew were waiting at the open dock door to start the get-out, Madonna and company came back out and performed Holiday anyway, with the audience filling the audibility gap. Whether you come back or not, Madonna, this was a night none who were there will forget.

[survivalartist 6,644]

http://pagesix.com/2015/12/23/judge-orders-madonnas-son-to-return-to-nyc/

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/madonna/12067213/Madonna-goes-to-court-to-force-15-year-old-son-to-return-to-New-York.html (includes photo of Madonna in NYC outside of courthouse)

 

Pasting nightmares. Soz. 

[realityisalways 4,029]

Amazing and comprehensive review (in spanish) of her london show, the title is Why Madonna at 57 is Still the Queen of Pop

 

http://www.clarin.com/viva/Revista_Viva-_Madonna-Rebel_Heart_Tour-Londres_0_1493250839.html