RIO DE JANEIRO — This time last year, Rio de Janeiro’s prime Carnival venue was a cauldron of glitter-smeared, scantily dressed bodies packed together, swaying to the beat of drums.
But this past weekend, the only trace of samba at the venue, the Sambódromo parade grounds, was a few melancholic verses that Hildemar Diniz, a composer and Carnival aficionado known as Monarco, belted out through his mask after he went there to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
“There is great sadness,” said Mr. Diniz, 87, who was impeccably dressed in white. “But it is essential to save lives. People love to party, to dance, but this year we don’t get to.”
In good times and bad, Rio de Janeiro’s famously boisterous Carnival has endured, often thriving when the going got particularly tough.
People partied hard during years of war, hyperinflation, repressive military rule, runaway violence and even the Spanish Flu in 1919, when the Carnival was considered among the most decadent on record. Official calls to postpone it in 1892 and 1912 — because of a trash-collection crisis and to mourn the death of a statesman — were largely ignored as people flocked to the streets in costumes.
