“You know it’s been 652 days since I have seen this audience,” said Lady Gaga Thursday night at Las Vegas’ newly minted Dolby Live theater at Park MGM.
Delivering a triumphant return to the stage this past weekend with three performances, Lady Gaga resumed her Jazz & Piano residency after a 21-month hiatus.
On the heels of the Sept. 30 release of Love for Sale, her second and final jazz album with Tony Bennett, Gaga belted through 20 songs ranging from the quintessential “Luck Be a Lady” to “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” Even for those who may have seen one of the show’s previous nine performances throughout 2019, this version of Jazz & Piano felt completely refreshed with six new numbers including the title track of the recent record as well as Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” “Do I Love You” and “You’re the Top.”
The return of Jazz & Piano also signifies the debut of Dolby Live, formerly Park Theater, the first venue to feature a fully integrated Dolby Atmos music experience — designed, calibrated and tuned by Dolby engineers to match the size and characteristics of the space.
Dolby Live takes listeners inside the music with clarity and depth, from hearing the layers of instruments to catching the nuances of Gaga’s witty quips in between songs — a hallmark of the experience.
Of “Love for Sale,” she said, “Every prostitute in Las Vegas sings this song and if you haven’t been with a prostitute before this is how it goes … and I can’t finish out the operation from here but you know love is for sale … I’m just a highly paid prostitute who sings.”
Other additions to the setlist included “Mambo Italiano,” which she said was inspired by her coming turn in the MGM film House of Gucci, and Bennett’s “Rags to Riches.”
Of Bennett, she said, “Everybody asks me about Tony — and they get real serious — and they say what’s it like singing with someone who has Alzheimer’s. I tell everybody — it is just that Tony’s nature is changing, it is not that he is changing.”
To those in the 5,200-seat theater, in acknowledgment of what she called the “super virus,” she said: “Many of you still have your masks on and some of you don’t, and I think it is nice not to judge each other and let’s just try to have some fun … please feel free to take off your masks and dance, just stay six feet away from each other.”
