Madonna face à son public italien : analyse des concerts Ciao Italia de la tournée Who’s That Girl (1987)

Abstract

In September 1987, two concerts were organized in Florence and Turin at the end of Madonna’s world tour Who’s That Girl. What was Madonna’s relationship to the Italian audience? In spite of the satisfaction to rediscover her ‘homeland’, her performances and speeches on stage are far from the celebration of a special event. They reveal Madonna’s strategies to embody a living and postmodern myth by the interpretation of several characters on stage. This analysis of the whole Turin concert from the DVD Ciao Italia (1999) mainly refers to the theory of performer as a persona by Philip Auslander. Madonna does not appear as much as a ‘real performer’ (an Italian girl). She succeeds in integrating the Italian audience to a show similar to the previous ones from her world tour.