“It looks like a play! An opera!” an ecstatic lady exclaimed final evening, joined by her associate and her two kids of their twenties, on the exit of the second live performance of the tour. Lux by Rosalía on the Movistar Arena in Madrid, in entrance of 17,000 individuals (full). Since the Catalan artist started tour of his new album, on March 16 within the French metropolis of Lyon, these comparisons have been frequent each among the many public and in skilled chronicles. There has additionally been discuss of ballet, up to date dance, efficiency, symphonic, digital or flamenco music, in addition to Goya, Degas, the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. Poured all this out like an avalanche within the media and social networks, chopped up and scrutinized as if it have been a normal tradition take a look at, it might seem to be a lower and paste. A mixture of genres, aesthetics and iconic creative references splendid for instagramear like whenever you go to go to the Louvre.
But simply as attending a theatrical or operatic efficiency shouldn’t be the identical as seeing it recorded, even on the large display and with the very best manufacturing, you can’t choose a live performance with movies or clips on social networks both. In each instances, they’re performing disciplines, what they name “living arts,” which have survived since historic Greece regardless of the omnipresence of screens or maybe exactly due to that. You should expertise them dwell to actually get pleasure from (or undergo) them. Many followers with tickets for upcoming concert events have roared in latest days in opposition to the avalanche of spoilers that reveal particulars of Rosalía’s present, however what distinction does it make?: it is as if we stopped going to see Romeo and Juliet as a result of we already know the ending.
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The creative references of Rosalía’s ‘Lux Tour’
Although there are actually many moments instagrameables, the place you play and win Lux It’s dwell. Despite the disparity in languages, types and aesthetics, the present maintains a unity of favor and inside coherence on all fronts: narrative, visible and conceptual. There are additionally quite a few scenic components that assist a relentless, though not static, universe, with a minimalist however powerfully symbolic scenography, which synthesizes the essence of their newest album.: two flights of stairs that change place in every of the 4 acts through which the story is structured. present. Sometimes they invite you to rise to the sky and different occasions to twirl within the basements. The two massive screens that body the stage, past the amplification operate, are elementary within the improvement of the dramaturgy: they level out, body, underline and improve feelings within the method of latest theater.
But all this could be superfluous if a very powerful factor in a musical present did not work: the interpretation. Rosalía, other than her fabulous vocal vary, is all true on stage. He will be moved to tears in his most intimate songs after which make eye contact with the viewers to soften them with a smile. It is obvious, as she has been criticized for the reason that tour started, that she shouldn’t be an opera diva or a ballet virtuoso when she rises on pointe, however she doesn’t intend to be both: they’re sparks that she intersperses to take us for a second to different worlds.
This hybridization of languages and disciplines can also be attribute of present performing arts. Even earlier than the live performance started final evening on the Movistar Arena Madrid, a earlier sound setting that was uncommon in pop concert events, with fragments of operas and emblematic items from the classical repertoire, warned of the combination. Or that little sound of strings tuning, so acquainted earlier than an opera or symphony live performance, additionally surprising within the context. And the format of the Heritage orchestra, positioned within the middle of the ground, as a substitute of in a pit or behind the artist.
On stage, in the meantime, a closed curtain representing the again of a canvas anticipated the 2 foremost visible narratives. On the one hand, the residing recreation of emblematic work and sculptures. On the opposite, the impudent show of the backstage of the performing arts, one other watchword of latest theater for the reason that avant-garde broke the fourth wall to dismantle the artifice of bourgeois naturalist theater. In this fashion, Rosalía additionally breaks away from the corsets and conventions of concert events to create her personal guidelines. She herself, in her first look on stage, will arrive stuffed in a trunk of props to emerge dressed as a ballerina with a tutu as if she have been a doll locked in a music field.
From that soulless floor zero, the artist will transfer by a number of emotional states, supported by a first-class dance workforce and efficient however not gimmicky choreographies, on the degree of one of the best European up to date dance. They are signed by the French collective (LA)HORDE, aside from the one which went viral from the primary live performance in Lyon: the one conceived for the track The pearl por el griego Dimitris Papaioannou.
The division of the live performance into 4 acts has given rise to comparisons with the opera, but additionally the grandiose design with which some sections are conceived, the emotional somersaults, the mix of intimate moments with different festive ones, in addition to scenes such because the one dubbed on social networks because the “confessional interlude”, the place Rosalía invitations her mates to inform their worst love experiences (in Madrid, Monday was the youtuber I’m Una Pringada and final evening the rapper Metrika).
But no: Lux can’t be judged the best way one would choose an opera. Nor as a theatrical, musical or dance present. Not even like a pop live performance. These are Rosalía’s guidelines and so they have to be valued as such. Maybe we must always apply a definition much like the one that somebody (we by no means knew who) attributed to Lola Flores: “It is not opera or ballet or theater, but don’t miss it.”
https://elpais.com/cultura/2026-04-02/no-es-opera-ni-teatro-ni-ballet-pero-no-se-la-pierdan-es-rosalia.html