Central Park Concert Draws Thousands to Cheer New York’s Comeback

Thousands of people made their way to the Great Lawn of Central Park on Saturday afternoon, flashed their proof of vaccination and took their places on the grass for an all-star concert — with a lineup including Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Jennifer Hudson — to celebrate the reopening of New York City after more than a year of pandemic hardship and shutdowns.

Moments before the show began at 5 p.m., the clouds in the sky parted and beams of sunlight doused the park, bringing exclamations of joy from the crowd. Gayle King, a co-host of “CBS This Morning,” began the evening by thanking the essential workers who had pulled the city through the darkest days of the pandemic.

“We were once the epicenter of this virus, and now we’ve moved to being the epicenter of the recovery,” she said. “We gather for a common purpose: to say, ‘Welcome back, New York City!’”

She then introduced the New York Philharmonic, which kicked off the concert with the overture to Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide,” conducted by Marin Alsop, a Bernstein protégée. The orchestra then played a medley of New York-themed music, including bits of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” and “Theme from ‘New York, New York,’” the anthem made famous by Frank Sinatra, among others.

The concert, “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert,” which was being broadcast live on CNN, was part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to celebrate the city’s emergence from the pandemic. The lineup was set to feature Elvis Costello, Carlos Santana, Maluma, the Killers, Patti Smith, Journey, Kane Brown, LL Cool J, and Earth, Wind and Fire, among others.

When the concert was announced by Mr. de Blasio in June, plunging coronavirus case numbers and rising vaccination figures had filled the city with hope.

But circumstances have shifted considerably over the past two months. The spread of the highly contagious Delta variant has led some city businesses to postpone the return to their offices, prompted the city to institute vaccine mandates for indoor dining and entertainment and threatened to destabilize the wider concert business.

On June 7, the day the concert was announced, the city was averaging 242 cases a day; the daily average is now more than 2,000 cases a day.

With the Philharmonic still onstage, the concert continued with Andrea Bocelli, the star Italian tenor, singing “O Sole Mio,” and Jennifer Hudson, the star of the new Aretha Franklin biopic “Respect,” singing Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” — a beloved aria that became associated with Franklin after she sang it at the Grammy Awards in 1998.

As the crowd streamed in, the idea of New York’s return — whether a two-fisted vanquishing of a viral enemy or a premature declaration of victory — was on seemingly everyone’s mind.

“This is our reopening — this is our invitation to get back to real life,” said Dean Dunagan, 52, of the Lower East Side, who had come to see Mr. Springsteen and had been waiting outside the park for four and a half hours before the gates were opened.

“New York has been punched in the face every other decade, or whatever,” Mr….