RIO DE JANEIRO — The skies opened on Sunday night over Maracanã, the stadium where Brazil bade farewell to the Rio Olympics with a spectacle celebrating everything from the giants of Brazilian music to the rock art drawn by tribesmen thousands of years ago, as if the heavens were lamenting the end of the 17-day sports extravaganza.
Still, the rainfall at the closing ceremony had little effect on the spirits of the performers who praised towering creative figures and thinkers like the prolific composer Heitor Villa-Lobos; the landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx; and Niède Guidon, the archaeologist whose discoveries in the remote caves of northeast Brazil are challenging long-held beliefs about the peopling of the Americas.