Lady Gaga‘s Mayhem Ball Tour is a theatrical production, the best around because it combines cinema, fashion, and music, divided into four acts where she stages her alter ego: the eternal dualism between light and dark, black and white, blonde or brunette.
Thirty songs and thirty dancers at the Forum di Assago in Milan, sold out on October 19 and 20, to celebrate her seventh album Mayhem, number one in the US charts and on Spotify, where it is breaking every record, marking the artist’s return after seven years of silence. It is an album that owes much to a duet with Bruno Mars and a single directed by Tim Burton, The Dead Dance.
Before Lady Gaga, only Madonna had been capable of something similar. She was welcomed by thousands of fans who chose to camp out so as not to miss the most anticipated event of the year: a sort of escape from reality. The dark makeup and dress code of the fans present says a lot about their connection to their secular and gothic Madonna: dressed in black, red, and white, in the style of Alexander McQueen. Lady Gaga thus proves herself to be the true subversive among many who claim to be so.
Among her colleagues were Elodie, Mahmood, and Donatella Versace, her mentor, to whom she paid special tribute. “I’ve had many ups and downs in my career, and the people around me changed, they didn’t support me because I wasn’t cool anymore. Donatella, on the other hand, was always there. When I felt down, she created even more extravagant outfits than before,” confirmed Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta of New York.
Consecrated to the general public thanks to Poker Face in 2008, she had already made a name for herself in 2005 with Abracadabra. She may soon be showing off her creative flair in cinema, as the pop star has found time to join Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway during the filming of The Devil Wears Prada 2, during the Milan Fashion Week shoot.
Not to mention the other 87 dates scheduled around the world until April 2026: from Australia to Japan to the United States. Her ability to portray her fragility and make it collective finds consensus with the public: from her fear of men, sex, and judgment, Lady Gaga tells her own story and that of a fluid and fragile era.
The memory of her Italian grandmother, Joanne, provokes her final catharsis as she plays the piano, proving herself to be a woman of flesh and blood like any other, and also emotional. Her fans had chanted “You’re beautiful” shortly before, they had proposed marriage to her, she replied: “I love you. I’m lucky”, thus demonstrating that she has a heart as well as a multifaceted and chameleon-like talent and boundless success at less than forty years of age.
