Rio de Janeiro’s carnival, a glittering, sequin-studded festival of the flesh, exploded back to life Friday with the first famed samba school parades since Covid-19 started devastating Brazil.
After two long years, a flood of dancers and drummers reclaimed the iconic beach city’s “Sambadrome,” its dedicated carnival parade venue, which had been turned into a drive-through vaccination centre at the height of the health crisis.
The all-night parades by the city’s top samba schools Friday and Saturday nights are the first since February 2020, marking…