Toronto; September 12 and 13 at Air Canada Center

[jayaredee]

wohooooo, awesome!!! i'm happy for you!

they will give you 2 tickest + wristbands, so now you can make one of your friends very happy

Thanks so much babe. I responded to the email link he sent me. When am I supposed to hear back. I am panicking. I need my wristbands like now. I am shaking

[graffitiheart]

Thanks so much babe. I responded to the email link he sent me. When am I supposed to hear back. I am panicking. I need my wristbands like now. I am shaking

you should hear back right away the first time asking for your name + guest, after that they respond with instructions. If they havent answered with instructions it may be they dont have them yet...its no harm in asking them again

[jayaredee]

well done jayaredee!

3 of my Twitter friends won through Icon and literally are so ecstatic!

Thanks hun. I am so pumped. I never would have believed my harassing on twitter would have got my anywhere.

I finally got all the information. Thanks fabian. I am just being a paranoid queen.

I'm literally shaking. I bought tickets for tonight and gave them away to my co-workers that couldn't afford to go. I cannot believe I'm going to be in breathing distance from the Queen of Life

[LCD]

Ahhh so happy for you, jayaredee! Report back with all the goods!

[loomer]

MadFan

[Mario24]

Thanks fabian.

I sent pictures yesterday and today. He will probably block me soon. LOL. Just give me what I deserve. People outside the arena shouldn't be as entitled to pit tickets for answering simple Madonna trivia over the fans like me who has collected everything of hers.

I am guessing the competition for Toronto will be tighter.Madonna fans a rabid here.

Congrats !!!!!! See u there

[Vetiver]

Guys any news???

[MadFan]

MadFan

loomer

TOMORROW IS sO CLOSE

[MeravA]

My friend just tweeted me....Madonna is doing Holiday in Toronto right now!!!!

[MadFan]

I bet $$$ to donuts she brought up the arrest again

[Guest bluejean]

So Holiday is permanatently part of the setlist now?

Let's hope she does it for the DVD!!

[jayaredee]

I just got back and am so tired.

The golden triangle will be a night to remember forever. Greatest night of my life. She was on fire to tonight and the crowd seemed to really give her the affection she deserved. She sang quite a bit of Holiday; more than she did in New York. It was a real treat. Some guy near me tried to take the microphone from her hand during LAP but she wasn't having that shit and pulled it away.

Every performance was stellar. I know I'm not much of a critic but she really nailed every performance.

My 2 friends who are casual fans and never seen Madonna live went to tonight's show and told me about how in awe they were and that they had the time of their lives.

Anyways I'm off to sleep and back for seconds tomorrow

[dramos520]

i hope she sings Holiday in Los Angeles or some other surprise

[aorlaan]

Was Vibez there?

[zerbion]

more here:

MDNA TOUR TORONTO 09.12 – GALLERY #1

http://wp.me/p22yAB-3to

[markm]

From Madonnatribe

Neil

Her sound guy Dan sought me out to say goodbye, she spent Turn Up The Radio first verse & chorus pointing at me and singing into my eyes before moving on to Dave (torontoboy) for 2nd verse who also got the EY Salute, fun with Alessandro after the show-bitch wouldnt carry me out lol, amazing crowd, special exchange with Guy and FULL HOLIDAY. One of, if not THE best Madonna concert experiences ever..thank you & goodnight Toronto, let's do it all again tomorrow. What a night.

Spoke to various crew after the show. They don't know if she's doing Holiday until she says 'I haven't had a Holiday'.

Night all x photos tomoro x

[dramos520]

maybe she will do holiday when the crowd is good

[LoveBoxx]

HOLIDAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!

[San]

[jonski43]

Wow! Holiday. She should keep it in. It certainly livens up that dull section of the show. And a great performance too. Simple and fun.

[Vetiver]

She is just the best, she's got it, never loose it, knows what to say, how to say it and when to say it, is the Ultimate Performer, no one is near her by far by really really far ... This World, No substitute for Madonna

[Nonoka]

She was also in Toronto exactly 1 year ago for the film festival (and this time, I got the date right)

[HolidayGuy]

Well, it wasn't FULL "Holiday" (as there was no second verse or bridge), but it was more than NY.

Love that she broke out some Blond-Ambition-"Holiday" bump moves with the dancers.

[jayaredee]

I'm still in awe and shock of the whole experience of being in the Golden Triangle. Never have I been part of such an intimate concert experience and with Madonna of all people. I'm never going to forget it. It was truly surreal.

The only issue was that we had to stand and endure Paul Oakenfold for an hour. It was truly tedius and I don't know how the people around me were enjoying that noise he was piping out.

I'm so glad she did Holiday too. One of those rare instances at the perfect moment.

[Mario24]

tonight is my night !! Finally !!!!!!!!!

I can' t wait !!!!!!

[Littlebastard]

My friends from Toronto who went all loved it and my best buddy whos a casual fan called it the best show he's seen!

According to them the crowd was great.

[HolidayGuy]

Some Canadian reviews/reports:

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/09/13/madonna-mixes-old-with-new-at-acc

Toronto Sun

Madonna mixes old with new at ACC

By Jane Stevenson ,QMI Agency

TORONTO - Madonna’s life-long themes of church and spirituality once again dominated The Material Girl’s so-called MDNA show as she launched a two-night stand at the Air Canada Centre in front of a sold-out crowd on Wednesday night.

And for the religiously curious 54-year-old singer-songwriter-dancer — raised Catholic and now a Kabbalah worshipper — maybe that’s appropriate.

“We’re all in one room to celebrate life, correct?” she said at one point in the spectacle-like show, which featured plenty of moving stage parts, big video screens, slick lighting and Jean Paul Gaultier-designed costumes.

But it definitely took a while to move from dark to light.

A stern, dramatic opening began Madge’s one-hour-and-55-minute show supporting her latest dance disc, MDNA, as dancers dressed in burgundy monk outfits rang bells and marched across a church-like setting, complete with stained-glass windows, while a giant incense holder (thurible) swung over the heads of a couple hundred audience members lucky enough to be squeezed near the front of the stage inside a point-shaped catwalk.

Madonna kicked the night off with Girl Gone Wild, dressed in a form-fitting black shirt and pants, but it wasn’t really until the next song, Revolver, that she really got our attention as she and her dancers wielded guns, which Madge herself would put to repeated use during the next number, Gang Bang, set in a cheap hotel room bearing a giant cross on the wall.

In that room and on the catwalk, Her Madjesty repeatedly shot intruders.

Pardon the pun, but it was overkill.

Making up for those mis-steps were a short version of her classic Papa Don’t Preach, her later hit Hung Up — with her dancers in camouflage and balaclavas and performing on slackropes (as opposed to tightropes), and Madonna even strapped on a guitar on the new song I Don’t Give A, as the front of her catwalk was elevated.

But it was the first burst of colour with The Material Girl and her female dancers dressed up as drum majorettes in white and red uniforms complete with twirling batons for Express Yourself and Give Me All Your Lovin’ where the concert really came alive a good half-hour into the proceedings.

And while it took a while to get used to a drastically reworked Open Your Heart, featuring the Basque trio Kalakan, when the song took off, it really took off, due in no small part to the presence of her young son Rocco (with ex-husband Guy Ritchie) who bust a few dance moves and came back to the stage repeatedly as the show progressed.

“We just have to feel that it’s coming from the heart,” she explained of new versions of her old songs, and she had a point.

Madonna’s daughter Lola Leon (with Carlos Leon) was also listed as a performer in her tour program but with all of her female dancers brunette, it was actually hard to tell which one she was.

Needless to say they could all dance well.

Madge also didn’t hesitate to promote her critically panned film W.E., which showed at TIFF last year, showing clips from it while she sang the movie’s Golden Globe-winning song Masterpiece.

But possibly the biggest crowd pleaser was Vogue, which saw her and her dancers dressed in different black and white ensembles.

She even chugged back a martini before taking on Candy Shop/Erotica and the most provocative song of the night, Human Nature, which saw her strip down to her bra, with the words “Free Pussy” stencilled on her back, and lower her pants entirely to reveal a thong and fishnet stockings from the back.

That was followed by a slow, solo piano version of Like A Virgin that saw Madonna climb up on the piano.

As the concert neared its end, Madonna was dressed Joan of Arc-like in a Medieval warrior outfit of a shiny silver split gown and pants as the theme of church reared its head again while she sang I’m A Sinner with the help of Kalakan, and Like A Prayer with her dancers and Rocco dressed like a church choir in black and white.

The song ended with what looked like huge Hebrew prayer tablets as the backdrop.

MADONNA SET LIST:

Girl Gone Wild

Revolver

Gang Bang

Papa Don’t Preach

Hung Up

I Don’t Give A

Best Friend/Heartbeat (video interlude)

Express Yourself

Give Me All Your Luvin’

Turn Up the Radio

Open Your Heart (with Kalakan)

Holiday

Masterpiece (with Kalakan)

Justify My Love (video interlude)

Vogue

Candy Shop/Erotica

Human Nature

Like a Virgin

Nobody Knows Me (video interlude)

I’m Addicted

I’m a Sinner (with Kalakan)

Like a Prayer

Celebration

------------------------------------------------

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/article/1255947--madonna-s-toronto-concert-favoured-new-songs-over-old-hits-review

Toronto Star

9/13/12

Madonna’s Toronto concert favoured new songs over old hits: Review

By Ben Rayner Pop Music Critic

Madonna’s got her back up and it’s fun to watch it goin’ down. Just give into it.

To admit a fondness for this year’s contentious MDNA album is to be shunned like a leper in an overwhelming number of “tastemaking” quarters, which is par for the course if you’re the sort of Madonna apologist who might have already defended, say, 2003’s similarly reviled American Life against an unswervingly hostile public — and to that this writer stands proudly guilty as charged — but likely a far more irksome fate at this point if you’re Madonna herself. Madge’s outsized sense of self-worth isn’t taking MDNA’s dismissal lying down, and the world tour she brought to the Air Canada Centre for the first of two back-to-back Toronto dates on Wednesday night has placed a bloody minded emphasis on the new stuff over the hits, whether you like it or not.

A bit of a bloody emphasis, too, for that matter. Following a grandiose, church-confessional intro set to the Catholic Act of Contrition, Wednesday night’s ACC show burst headlong into a rendition of MDNA’s “Girl Gone Wild” that concluded with Madonna stalking the stage with a mock AK-47 in hand as a segue into “Revolver.” She then proceeded to theatrically gun her dancers down one by one — including a paramilitary-looking chap who rappelled down from the ceiling — like a Bond-film villainess or one of Charlie’s Angels gone hopelessly sociopathic while gore splattered in time to each kill across the high-def video screens behind her during a driving run through the new album’s “Gang Bang.”

Somehow all that action-movie violence gave way to “Papa Don’t Preach” and the equally unanticipated — not to mention equally fictitious — sight of Madonna hoisting a guitar around her neck for MDNA’s feisty “I Don’t Give A…” At that point, you were faced with a choice: either suffocate yourself with disgust at the sheer, pretentious, egotistical nonsense wasting untold millions of dollars in front of you or simply sit back and marvel at how seamlessly and spectacularly the modular, LED-lit stage kept rearranging itself into dozens of ever-shifting Q-Bert landscapes while an entire pep-rally drum squad levitated into view.

So, yes, restraint and good taste were hard to come by on the night. Ms. Ciccone did let this particular evening’s interpolation of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” into “Express Yourself” slip by without calling undue attention to it, however, and interrupted the general ridiculousness of the proceedings at the midpoint to make a reasonably sincere plea for Western society to move beyond its overwhelmingly “white and straight and Christian” viewpoint.

“We’re all in one room to celebrate love, correct? The only thing we have to get rid of is our big, fat f------ egos,” she said. “We’re all the f------ same … If we don’t start treating each other with human dignity, this s--- is going down and we’re all going down with it. Am I making myself clear?”

Not entirely clear, no, given that the speech was followed by a 40-foot-high “boudoir” video reel of Madonnas past and present in provocative, partially dressed poses and a stylishly appointed, all-in parade of black-and-white fabulousness to “Vogue,” one of the more unapologetically smashing monuments to egotism pop music has ever produced.

The torchy piano-and-voice version of “Like a Virgin” that followed was much less fun and entirely patience-testing in its self-indulgence — you could understand why the top-hatted piano player might want to strangle himself at the end of it, not why Madonna might want to strangle him — but quickly forgiven when followed up by booming dance-party versions of the MDNA tracks “I’m Addicted” and “I’m a Sinner” that sold them as the underrated pop hits they long to be. “Like a Prayer” followed to the crowd’s overwhelming delight and maybe a touch of relief at hearing something concretely from the canon, then a rave-y, ultra-lit stomp through “Celebration” ended the night on a note of something like genuine … celebration. A slightly guarded celebration, maybe, given the lack of greatest hits deployed throughout the evening that built to it, but one that left little doubt that Madonna was still in charge of this spectacle and doing whatever she damn well pleased.

---------------------------------------------------------

http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/09/11/madonna-wows-crowd-at-scotiabank-place

Ottawa Sun

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Madonna wows crowd at Scotiabank Place

By Aedan Helmer, Ottawa Sun

The fans who shelled out upwards of $300 for the hottest ticket in town know that Madonna puts on less of a concert than an all-out event.

None went home disappointed from the sold-out Scotiabank Place show that stretched well into the midnight hour.

Of course, with all the international headlines left in the wake of her MDNA tour — with the swastikas superimposed over political faces, the flaming crucifixes, the boob flashes, feigned violence and calls for revolution — it seemed like everyone was waiting to see which pot Madonna would stir next.

Truly, it just doesn’t qualify as a cause celebre anymore until Madonna’s scrawled in lipstick across her backside.

But other than a “No Fear” tattoo on her exposed back, there was little in the way of political furor, and except for a few cheeky exchanges with fans, Madonna mostly let her music do the talking.

Not that a Madonna concert is ever just about the music.

The accompanying imagery, dripping with metaphor, was just as much a part of the spectacle as the music, and, as expected from someone with Madonna’s knack for provocation, the images pulled no punches.

The show’s overture began with a dozen cloaked figures swinging a giant smoking urn over the crowd as Madonna descended from the rafters in a gilded confessional, launching her MDNA tour as she does the album with Girl Gone Wild.

Images of Renaissance-styled angels descended into a hellfire backdrop as the beat slipped into Revolver, but the opening credits to The Exorcist soon dissolved into something more closely resembling a Tarantino film.

Under the throbbing beat of Gang Bang, Madge and her femmes fatale wielded pistols and assault rifles and randomly picked off imaginary assailants in the crowd as all sorts of blood spatter and viscera splashed across the screen.

Numerous video interludes showcased her entourage of toned dancers, and allowed for the customary costume changes as the set unfolded in five distinct acts: Transgression, Prophecy, Turning Up the Hits, Masculine/Feminine and Celebration.

After such a foreboding opening, resonating with Gothic subtext, Madonna emerged from the first costume change as a caricature of her old, bubbly bleached blonde persona, dressed as a marching bandleader complete with twirling baton for Express Yourself.

And if there’s anything to the rumours of a feud between Madonna and her prime progeny Lady Gaga, the Queen still wears the crown, as she interpolated the carbon copy Born This Way, singing (somewhat cattily) “She’s not me” before busting back into Express Yourself.

And the fans — the show was, as expected, a complete sellout with more than 15,000 packing Scotiabank Place, many likely rueing Tuesday morning as the show didn’t get underway until almost 10:30 — gleefully played the part, with many dressed up and putting on their favourite era Material Girl face.

All of those faces were present on stage, too.

Madonna emerged in tight black leather slinging a matching six string for Turn Up the Radio, she was her bad Catholic girl prototype on all fours in Papa Don’t Preach, Masterpiece ushered in a cadre of Golden Age Hollywood romantics in flickering monochrome, the sex-charged groove of Human Nature featured her Erotica imagery, and she was barely recognizable as a grown-up crooning the once-bubbly Like a Virgin.

Yet, for all of her longevity, the 54-year-old Queen of Reinvention rarely showed her age, her trademark lithe moves front and centre on every song.

The only time she even hinted at her years was when she informed the audience her son, who usually dances in the show, had to miss Monday’s gig “because he had to go to school.”

Only fitting, because “back to school” is exactly where Madonna sent a new generation of impersonators.

MADONNA SETLIST:

Girl Gone Wild

Revolver

Gang Bang

Papa Don’t Preach

Hung Up

I Don’t Give A

Express Yourself (with Born This Way)

Give Me All Your Luvin’

Turn Up the Radio

Open Your Heart

Masterpiece

Vogue

Candy Shop

Human Nature

Like A Virgin

Nobody Knows Me

I’m Addicted

I’m A Sinner

Like a Prayer

Celebration

-----------------------------------------------------------

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/article/1255546--madonna-expect-provocation-but-not-all-the-hits-in-concert

Toronto Star

Madonna in Toronto: Expect provocation, but not all the hits

Published on Wednesday September 12, 2012

By Ben Rayner Pop Music Critic

Give it to Madonna, man: girl still knows how to push buttons.

For all the moral decay and Satanic evil their foes might once have declared them to represent, most of popular music’s fallback bogeymen — from Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to Alice Cooper and Judas Priest to Marilyn Manson and Slipknot — have tended to drift off the moral-majority radar so quickly that the parental protests, record burnings, wacko lawsuits and occasional legislative actions briefly mounted against them come to seem quaint, if not utterly backwards, within a matter of a few years.

Follow Ben Rayner on Twitter tonight as he tweets the Madonna concert live from @ihatebenrayner#madonna.

Madonna Louise Ciccone, however, remains a perennial bogeywoman. Her MDNA tour descends upon Toronto’s Air Canada Centre for a two-night stand this Wednesday evening trailing an impressive chain of controversies — controversies rendered almost more impressive because of their complete predictability — behind it:

• A not particularly coded shout-out to Ecstasy users at the Ultra festival in Miami;

• A nipple-flashing in Istanbul;

• A provocative flash of a swastika over right-wing French politician Marine Le Pen’s image in Paris;

• A mooning in Rome;

• A refusal to tone down the MDNA stage show’s theatrical displays of gun violence in Edinburgh 36 hours after the Colorado movie-theatre shootings;

• Loud proclamations of support for imprisoned feminist punks Pussy Riot and gay rights in Moscow and St. Petersburg, respectively, after being warned by officials in both cities against attempting either;

• And, lest we forget, a nightly ritual of publicly dissing Lady Gaga for copping a bit of “Express Yourself” in “Born This Way” that has moved none other than Sir Elton John to disgustedly dismiss the latter-day Madonna as a “f------ fairground stripper.”

The tour has stirred up enough fuss so far, in any case, that Madonna felt compelled to issue a “manifesto” on her website late last month in its defence before commencing the North American leg of her itinerary in Philadelphia. Apparently, the production depicts “the journey of a soul from darkness to light.”

Whatever the MDNA tour’s intended thematic thrust might be, this ain’t a bad swath of outrage for a 54-year-old mom to leave in her wake. There are already lawsuits in the works from Le Pen’s National Front party and anti-gay activists in St. Petersburg, while roughly half of the United States is no doubt up in arms over the Material Girl’s recent decision to scrawl “Obama” across her back during a show in New York City.

She’s admittedly being rather courteous to Toronto, too, by coming back to town for a third time after the local constabulary’s morality squad made an infamous appearance — one forever immortalized on film in the 1991 documentary Truth Or Dare — at SkyDome in 1990 fretting that the Blond Ambition tour’s onstage depiction of masturbation contravened Ontario’s decency laws.

With or without the intrusion of the police or some other sort of state-sanctioned outrage, Madonna’s two Toronto performances this week will doubtless stand as unapologetically outsized and excessive exercises in modern-pop grotesquerie. And, to her credit, Madge still doesn’t seem to be shrinking away from the divisive content of this year’s lukewarmly received (but actually not bad) MDNA album on tour, giving the new stuff nearly as much time as the hits in the set list — which, naturally, stands as a whole, other Madonna controversy in itself.

The MDNA tour set list, as compiled from various fan and music-news sites to the best of our predictive ability:

Opening Prayer (“Act of Contrition”)

“Girl Gone Wild”

“Revolver”

“Gang Bang”

“Papa Don’t Preach”

“Hung Up”

“I Don’t Give A …”

“Best Friend” / “Heartbeat” (Interlude)

“Express Yourself” / ‘Born This Way”

“Turn Up the Radio”

“Give Me All Your Luvin’ ”

“Open Your Heart”

“Masterpiece”

“Justify My Love” (Interlude)

“Vogue”

“Candy Shop”/ “Erotica”

“Human Nature”

“Like A Virgin”

“Nobody Knows Me” (Interlude)

“I’m Addicted”

“I’m A Sinner”

“Like A Prayer”

“Celebration”

[MadFan]

^ My aunt works for the Star, the pressure was really on this review

Anyway, today is the day!!!

[shams]

What an amazing show last night in TO. I have seen her every time here since the 'Who's that Girl' show, and I have to say she has never been so "on" here. She was uber confident last night and very relaxed. Chatted with the crowd like never before. The show was amazing from begin to end, and her voice was wonderful last night... Can't wait for tonight!! Enjoy the show everyone!! By the way, Rocco is so cute lol.

[Mario24]

I'm speechless right now . What a show !!!! I was in the golden triangle and I got to sing the lat part of like a Prayer with her !!! While I was singing I was super excited and she told me to slow down..... So funny and I got to sing the rest of the show !!

I'm in heaven right now and need a video !!!!

More to come later