Perched atop the lid of a white grand piano, Rosalia had a confession to make.
“I would like to gamble a little tonight,” the Spanish pop superstar acknowledged from the T-Mobile Arena stage on Saturday, where she made her Vegas concert debut. “Just one time.”
By this point in the night, though, Rosalia already had done plenty of gambling — she’d just done so with songs in place of slot machines, taking one creative risk after the next.
Performing with a full orchestra in support of her latest album, “Lux,” a chamber pop masterwork, Rosalia’s show felt like one grand artistic roll of the dice.
Here are four takeaways from the lavish, 22-song production’s four acts:
A breath-taking beginning
It all began with an unboxing, a crew of dancers dismantling a large crate at the center of the stage to reveal a tutu-clad Rosalia, dressed as a ballerina.
She was on the tips of her toes soon enough, dancing en pointe in circles, her voice as fluid as her movements, going from the candle-in-the-wind vocal flicker of “Sexo, Violencia y Llantas” to the fanned flames of “Reliquia” in an instant.
The show’s six-song opening act exclusively mined “Lux,” an album inspired by the lives of various female saints, with Rosalia singing in their respective native tongues — on Saturday, her lyrics were translated to English on a video scroll above the stage.
During “Divinize,” dancers wrapped Rosalia in a cocoon of fabric before later undoing their work, symbolizing a recurring theme of metamorphosis over a beat that accelerated like a heart rate during a chase, the song concluding with a sample of Dido’s “Thank You.”
Then came an early showstopper, Rosalia thrusting her right arm in the air as her voice followed suit during “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti,” where she scaled octaves with the ease of a kid climbing an apple tree.
She caught her breath before we caught ours.
‘I’m everything’
“We didn’t come all the way here just to pray,” Rosalia announced early in act two. “We came to shake some (butts), too.”
Speaking of which, she’d soon turn her back to the crowd as dancers hiked up her dress to expose her hot pink undergarments.
Rosalia got a little cheeky — literally — during the second portion of the show, where she swapped her ballerina whites for a Maleficent-worthy black gown and matching feather headdress.
The sonics followed suit as Rosalia shifted her focus from symphonic pop to a trio of bangers from her reggaeton-informed third album, “Motomami.”
It was a seismic, scintillating shift.
“I’m very much me, I transform…” she explained on “Saoko,” her lyrics translated to English. “I contradict myself, I transform / I’m everything, I transform.”
And she wasn’t done yet.
A spiritual dimension
Above her swung a giant, smoke-spewing thurible suspended from the rafters, a glowing, zeppelin-sized version of the incense burners utilized in various religious traditions.
Rosalia swung harder still, joining the orchestra on a second stage in the middle of the arena to conclude a three-song intermezzo with a concussive “CUUUUuuuuuute.”
Pistoning up and down as if she was trying to crater the riser she was standing upon, her arms flashing out from her body like lightning bolts from a storm cloud, Rosalia rocked a beat that snapped like a string of fireworks going off.
In addition to said thurible, there were other religious and spiritual allusions throughout the show, like a confessional where Rosalia was joined on stage by drag queen Jewels Sparkles — every date on the “Lux” tour features a different guest at this point in the night.
And then there were the angel wings that Rosalia and her dancers donned during the concert’s final act, where they exorcised any lingering demons in song.
“The night is long…” Rosalia sang in Spanish during “Despechá.” “A violent mambo will end the problem.”
Introducing the art cam
The stage became an art gallery, Rosalia positioned as the piece de resistance, singing from behind a large golden picture frame atop a flight of stairs, a phalanx of fans arrayed beneath her.
She then performed the only song of the night delivered entirely in English, a playful, vampish cover of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.”
The art motif continued later, when famous historical portraits were displayed on one of the video screens that book-ended the stage. Audience members were then captured on an “art cam” and encouraged to recreate the iconic poses.
Rosalia’s aim here seemed clear, and it underscored everything that this show was about.
If art imitates life — as the saying goes — then why can’t the reverse be made true, at least for one night?
Contact Jason Bracelin at [email protected] or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.