Lady Gaga has dyed the red St. George Palace to welcome his “monsters” this Tuesday, in the first of the three concerts he will give in Barcelona this week, part of his tour The Mayhem Ball. The stage is taken over by a fortress, the strength that moments later the artist will demonstrate is hers. His place, his home, his kingdom and his legacy at the same time. The singer waits on the screen at the top, inviting the audience to her showto his house. A house in which she sets the rules, in which her dance troupe starts caged. In which fire springs, in which angels hang. And he only needs two songs to show that the only way to face what is about to happen is to surrender, without shame, willing to cry, to sweat, to grow.
Before the big start, she issues a warning from the lights, split into a Lady Gaga dressed in red and with black hair on the left, and herself, on the right, dressed in white, with a bouquet of roses of the same color in her hands. With them he introduces the concept that marks his tour, The art of personal chaos [El arte del caos personal]. A chaos that leaves no space or beat without content, without vibration, without adrenaline or allowing just seconds to catch a breath. Without truces, nor without senses. Lady Gaga gives a generous, exhausted, welcoming, devastating, dark and at the same time tremendously luminous concert.
Her entrance is at the top of a kind of red velvet altar, dressed in the same color, while she intones Bloody Mary. The artist’s music manages to penetrate the audience’s core in just two songs, and ends up enchanting them with its Abracadabra. “Put your hands up!” she asks shortly after from the center of the stage, where she is supported, not only by her dancers, but also by the band that also inhabits her castle.
From red he travels to green with which he culminates the first of the four acts that make up his performative proposal. And his proposal is not only about singing one song after another, here a story is told as if it were an opera, in which the singer fights his chaos, becomes even stronger, and with it, all his parishioners, whom he will later call “little monsters.” Poker faceone of his most emblematic songs, closes the already devastating initial chapter.
The gothic dream
The second act, And She Fell Into A Gothic Dream [Y ella cayó en un sueño gótico]inaugurates it Perfect Celebrity, with half-buried Lady Gaga now dressed in white, and a blonde wig. Dislocated corpses, covered in dirt, surround him. Several of his dancers also emerge from his particular pit, bringing life back to their bodies to the rhythm of Disease. “I can be your antidote tonight,” he sings while fighting with the pain, the anchors to the past that are better to forget, the poisons – whatever form they take – that in his show he materializes with a being dressed in red, as if it were the devil himself.
From there he goes on to face the traps of fame with his song Paparazziwith a powerful and distressing staging. The artist walks the catwalk using force against an eternal white veil that wants to make her retreat, by force. And with a lot. She walks carrying a kind of metal crutches in her arms, which seem like they can help her, but which show that popularity is not light, it has a weight that even so, she ends up conquering, armor through, with her arms raised, to make way for LoveGame and another of the most iconic – and award-winning – songs, Alejandroclimbed to the top of one of the sides of its fortress.
Lady Gaga deploys all possible resources to dominate the chaos, including electric guitars, which she also plays, transforming her into an extension of herself, into The Beast.
The beautiful nightmare
As if from the Queen of Hearts Alice in Wonderland Whatever it is, the artist starts the third act, The Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name [La hermosa pesadilla que se sabe su nombre]with the stage presided over by a giant, tilted skull. A skull that the cast moves because they can possess it while it plays Killah.
The show itself seems to be a catharsis for Lady Gaga herself, who at all times invites it to be a catharsis for her fans as well, whom she basically orders to scream and scream like she does, dancing like she does, raising their arms like she does. Because in its fortress even the dead dance, Zombieboy. Of course, the aesthetics of the show seem to have been conceived for the third of the concerts that she is going to give in Barcelona, this Friday, coinciding with Halloween, but a Halloween in which the artist manages to possess even terror, without fearing it, without romanticizing it, without idealizing it, possessing it. And the act ends with Applause y Just Dance to finish the exorcism.
The definitive reign
The ‘dance of the dead’ gives way to the last act of the concert, Every Chessboard Has Two Queens [Todo tablero de ajedrez tiene dos reinas]. Shadow of a Man y Kill for love are the songs that introduce it, with the singer and songwriter sporting gray hair and a military suit, black with white embroidery. This episode includes one of the most energetic moments of the show, thanks to Born this way and, above all, his dedication to the entire queer community: “This is for you, your pride, love, heart, freedom. We love you.”
But the most shocking thing was yet to come, with the trident Millions reasons, Shallow y Die with a smile. The latter with her –finally– at the piano. Especially with the first two songs, in which he sings to overcome that other ‘I’ – which for each one can have a form, meaning and entity, but from which no one is free, and it is difficult to try – that drags, that chains the pain, the anxiety, the anguish, the restlessness, which blinds us so as not to leave behind the “only reason” we need to stay with the one he talks about. Million Reasonsor the “depths” from which to move away into which it delves Shallow.
Lady Gaga resignifies with them the descent into hell until she sings about love in Die With a Smile; and return to its beginnings with Dance in the Darkbecause deep down Lady Gaga has always looked squarely at what is darkest, at what is painful, at what saddens, at the demons that sometimes, no matter how hard it is to recognize it, try – and from time to time succeed – to possess us. Maybe it’s for that same reason – steaks and looks extravagant through – and his torrent of voice, with such characteristic bass, with a register that reaches treble that also manages to resonate inside, inviting us to believe in victory. Hell is not eternal, it cannot be chosen, we can dance with it if we learn to do it, but to do so we have to face it, and sing until we burst. And if it’s at a concert like this, not designed to then ‘rock it’ on TikTok, the better.
