How the world’s most famous New Years celebrations have adapted to the pandemic

Good bye to 2020! The catharsis of leaving this pandemic year and welcoming 2021 goes through several of the best-known New Year’s celebrations in the world. Some have been canceled and others will not be able to have massive audiences due to the resurgence of COVID-19. This is why they will use the virtual modality, TV transmission and strict health protocols with distancing. Here, a review of how the festivities have been changed in New York, Sydney, Vienna, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid.

Times Square El Ball Drop

On New Year’s Eve in New York City this Thursday, there will be no more than a million people live to witness the balloon celebration in downtown Times Square. From their homes, by TV and streamingThey will be able to see the countdown to 11:59 p.m., marked by the Ball Drop: the descent, in the last 60 seconds of the year, of the iconic LED crystal ball, three meters in diameter, from the One Times Square tower.

Cinema made famous this ceremony, in force since 1907: watching this huge sphere fall from above, covered with 2,688 glass triangles and 672 LED modules. Every year the ball is shot at 6 p.m. and the face-to-face begins there, which lasts six hours and is broadcast worldwide, with amazing scoring records. At 11:59 p.m., the ball was launched, the countdown for the last minutes began and Happy New Year! Then the New York sky is filled with color by the thousands and thousands of gifts that are thrown from skyscrapers.

On the eve of 2021, Times Square will be closed for the general public and there will only be a small number of special guests (with strict distancing). Instead, the Ball Drop can be tracked from the official website https://nye2021.com, among others, and also by downloading the NYE app on cellphones: users will be able to beat the countdown, add their portents of better times and even take selfies to upload to social networks.

The show, starting at 6 p.m., will include live performances (from neighboring buildings) from Jennifer Lopez, Billy Porter, Cyndi Lauper, Gloria Gaynor, Jimmie Allen, Machine Gun Kelly, Anitta y Pitbullas well as greetings from various stars. At the closing, the artist Andra’s Day He will perform his hits “Rise Up” and “Forever Mine” and will finally sing “Imagine” by John Lennon, just before the Ball Drop. A message of hope and social change with absolute validity in these times of pandemic.

“NYE 2021 will not be open to the public, but we hope everyone can enjoy the virtual celebrations safely from their homes,” they said of the organization. Furthermore, they predicted that “it will be a very different event, reflecting the themes, challenges and inspirations of 2020. People around the world are ready to join New Yorkers in welcoming 2021 with the iconic ball drop.”

Sydney fireworks

At ten in the morning in Argentina, Australians were already shouting “Happy 2021!” due to fourteen hour intervals. The first traditional New Years Eve celebration was activated by lavish fireworks from the top of Sydney Harbor Bridge, Australia, next to the Opera House. Who will forget this famous reception of the year, crossed by the pandemic?

If millions of people had been there by early 2020, the first big welcome party of 2021 did not have a mass audience present. Authorities decided it due to the coronavirus outbreak, although Australia has, to date, 28,381 total positive cases and 909 deaths from COVID-19.

The original plan was for those who had reservations at nearby hotels, restaurants and clubs to travel to Sydney Harbor. It’s more: the strategic views of the fireworks were to be reserved for the doctors and nurses who worked hard this year. But the global upsurge in the pandemic has forced this show to be, finally, crowd-free.

As every year, the show above the Opera consisted of four thematic pyrotechnic exhibitions. At 8:00 p.m. Australian time, the Indigenous Smoking and Country Recognition Ceremony; at 9 p.m., the family fireworks display; at 22, the Special Moment, and at 24 the Midnight Fireworks. And the sky was full of explosions to leave behind that fateful 2020.

Vienna with waltzes and virtual applause

It’s a classic 81 years ago. New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra will have a waltz beat with online applause on the morning of January 1st. Health restrictions in Austria prevent the public in the Golden Hall (Goldener Saal) of the Musikverein in Vienna, this Friday, from 7.15 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. (Argentine time, four less than in Vienna). But seven thousand people will be able to hear their applause from their homes, via the Internet, and they will even be able to see their own photos uploaded during the broadcast.

This is what the Austrian Broadcasting (ORF) proposed: insert in the ceremony, broadcast on television and in streaming, previously chosen images of the spectators. They must register on the site www.mynewyearsconcert.com to receive an access link – suitable for all types of devices – and, listening to the New Year’s concert, with their microphones on, they will resound their applause in the Golden Hall in Vienna.

“We will play this year with a message of hope,” 79-year-old director Riccardo Muti, conducting for the sixth time conducting the Philharmonic New Year’s Concert in the so-called Great Hall (Große Saal) announced on Tuesday. . The program will begin with the “March of the operetta Fatinitza”, by Franz von Suppè; Waltzes and polkas by Johann and Josef Strauss (many of them, here for the first time) will be played, and between the rappels the “Radetzky March”, by Johann Strauss Sr., and the legendary “The Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss Jr. will be heard.

At the same time, four couples will have recorded the two numbers of remote ballets, in the open air, choreographed by the Spanish José Carlos Martínez: the French polka “Margherita”, by Josef Strauss, from the Looshaus -in the Viennese center- and the waltz “Voices of spring” by Johann Strauss Jr., from the Liechtenstein Garden Palace. And there will be images from all over Vienna to dream of being there once the pandemic has passed.

Rio de Janeiro without New Years Eve

At first, it was planned that New Year’s Eve, the New Year’s party with fireworks and music on Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, will turn into a reduced version: without an audience and only on television. At the start of 2020, that was a record, with nearly three million people.

But the worsening of the pandemic in Brazil (with 7.62 million cases and 194,000 deaths) determined that New Year’s Eve it will be canceled in total, like the carnival in February. So there will be no festivities, music, drinks and fireworks in Copacabana.

“Although the party has been projected in a new format, the mayor’s office chooses to cancel the event out of respect for all victims and to promote the safety of all», Mayor Marcelo Crivella announced a few days ago. With 17 million inhabitants, the state of Rio de Janeiro today has the highest coronavirus death rate in Brazil: 138 per 100,000 inhabitants and 25,000 deaths.

Without measuring the risks, this Tuesday about forty faithful of Afro-Brazilian beliefs in Rio, such as Umbanda and Candomblé, paid homage to Iemanjá, the goddess of the waters. They gathered to collect offerings and flowers in the Mercadao de Madureira, a commercial center in the north. They also released dozens of blue balloons in tribute to the victims of the pandemic. It was new to see the holy fathers and holy mothers (priests and priestesses) with masks.

Then they went to Copacabana beach. There were just over ten people, in white (as always) and with their distinctive ornaments: the offerings and flowers were lowered from five cars, and they left them to wash with the waves in honor of Iemanjá . They were careful not to build a temple on the beach to avoid the crowds. They also did not sing religious hymns with their musical instruments or perform their typical ritual dances.

Puerta del Sol in Madrid and the 12 grapes

The second wave of coronavirus brought very sad figures at the end of the Spanish year. As of December 31, a total of 51,000 deaths and a total of 1.91 million infections were recorded. Madrid, for example, recorded 3,782 new cases and 74 new deaths on the last day. It is the most affected district in all of Spain.

This is why the health authorities of the regional government of Madrid They have decided to put their mythical New Year celebration on hold: the expected gathering of a crowd at Puerta del Sol eat the 12 famous lucky grapes (one for each month of the New Year) to the sound of the chimes ringing from the Royal Post Office clock.

Allowed Agglomerations in public places and roads were prohibited from across the region. Traditional bells can only be followed on television.

However, Madrid will have its legendary New Year’s concert, which imitates that of Vienna. For the first time, it will be at the Grand Theater Bankia Príncipe Pío, an old abandoned station transformed into a large stage with face-to-face programming according to health protocols. For this reason, instead of just one show, there will be three: Friday 1 at 6:00 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. (Madrid time, four before Argentina), and Saturday at 1:00 p.m.

The Bankia Symphony Orchestra will perform Austrian classics, including waltzes and polkas from the Strauss family (“The Blue Danube”, the “Radetzky March”, etc.), “Hungarian Dance No. 5”, by Johannes Brahms , and passages from the opera “Carmen”, by Georges Bizet.