Rosalía Brings a Tour of Opera and Pop Delirium to Brazil

Rosalía performs in Brazil next week, and I will be in the audience for the second night, on August 11, in Rio de Janeiro. The anticipation would already be considerable simply because it is Rosalía, an artist who never seems interested in repeating what she has done before. But the LUX Tour arrives surrounded by something even more exciting: the feeling that we are about to witness a spectacle determined to expand the limits of what we understand a pop tour to be.

Since its premiere, the tour has been described less as a sequence of songs than as a complete theatrical work. There is opera, ballet, flamenco, electronic music, religion, humor, sensuality and an artist willing to turn her own body into part of the narrative. Rosalía sings, dances and performs, appears on pointe shoes and moves through a stage conceived as a space of faith, guilt, desire and liberation.

Naturally, the tour revolves around LUX, a monumental album in which Rosalía sings in several languages, explores religious imagery and brings orchestral music, electronic experimentation and pop together. Anyone expecting a conventional retrospective, with all the greatest hits performed one after another, may be surprised. The proposal is different: to guide the audience through an experience divided into acts, with shifts in atmosphere and images that seem to have emerged from a mass, an opera or a fever dream.

The set begins solemnly with songs such as “Sexo, violencia y llantas,” “Reliquia,” “Porcelana,” “Divinize” and “Mio Cristo piange diamanti.” Gradually, the ceremony begins to fracture and gives way to the more physical Rosalía of Motomami, with “SAOKO,” “LA FAMA” and “LA COMBI VERSACE.” Later, “BIZCOCHITO” and “DESPECHÁ” arrive almost as a moment of release after all the earlier solemnity. The closing performance of “Magnolias” returns the spectacle to the spiritual territory in which it began.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the show is precisely the way Rosalía refuses to choose between the experimental artist and the pop star. She can sing in an almost operatic register, surrounded by references to saints and sacrifice, and only a few minutes later transform the arena into a dance floor. There is no contradiction. This mixture is the essence of her work and also the reason each new project seems to require the audience to abandon the expectations created by the previous one.

There is also a confessional onstage, occupied by different guests each night. The segment introduces a small element of improvisation into an otherwise meticulously choreographed production and has produced encounters that are funny, emotional and unpredictable. In Buenos Aires, Lali Espósito was one of the guests and shared a personal story in front of Rosalía and the audience.

The Latin American leg has confirmed the strength of the production. Rosalía performed four shows in Santiago, welcomed by an audience singing along to songs in several languages, before continuing to Buenos Aires and then Rio. A second Brazilian performance was added in response to demand, turning her visit to the city into two nights at the Farmasi Arena.

The concerts take place on August 10 and 11, with doors opening at 6 p.m. and the performance scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. I will be there for the second night. And perhaps that is the best possible way to arrive at a Rosalía concert: knowing enough to recognize the ambition of what she has created, but still not knowing exactly how it will feel when experienced live.

Because videos, set lists and reviews can help anticipate the spectacle, but they cannot reproduce what appears to be at the heart of the LUX Tour: Rosalía’s presence. She is an artist who does not simply want to sing her songs to thousands of people. She wants to build an entire world in front of them — and then set it on fire.