Hernan Migoya Lima
Lime
Updated Thursday, March 7, 2024-9:39 p.m.
Luis Miguel A signed dish and a thousand-dollar tip that left the waiters at a restaurant speechless
This concert in Lima shines for its organization and those of us who arrive at the National Stadium at 6:00 p.m. can enter without waiting in line.
The grass of the soccer field is covered with rigid polypropylene tiles.
We sit down to wait, but they are more uncomfortable against our butts than under our feet.
Soon,
more than 40,000 enthusiasts fill the stadium
.
It is impossible to try to explain the enduring success of
Luis Miguel
to someone who has not loved his music since he was a child.
All Latin Americans have done it and that is why they adore him, even though his music is an arbitrary repertoire of covers with some song specifically composed for him.
Today all generations and social classes have attended
, and devotion is painted on the faces of women and men alike.
In women, a little more.
At 7:00 p.m. it is already dusk and a colorful virtual sunrise is projected on the colossal multiscreen that surrounds the stage:
the Sun of Mexico is about to arrive, an apt metaphor that we all understand
.
The fans get tense and, 70 meters from the stage, in our VIP Zone (named with a lot of imagination and whose access cost me 150 euros), they organize a human wall that no one is going to cross.
Those returning from relieving themselves in the portable toilets on both sides of the field and trying to rejoin their outposts engage in heated clashes of loud voices with those who will not allow it.
Verbal attacks between women are especially cruel.
More than one is right and rebukes some guy who puts her six feet tall in front of a sixty-year-old lady who won't be able to see anything that way.
Although to tell the truth, as we will later see, with a clear horizon we wouldn't be able to see much either.
A quarter of 8:00 p.m. passes and we get impatient because waiting standing is uncomfortable, squeezed on the field: paraphrasing Lubitsch's classic joke,
"Luis Miguel sets the field and we set the concentration
. "
The virtual sun has been frozen for a long time and doesn't even blink.
But, finally, the fanfares resound... and the audience goes crazy.
An effective and sophisticated orchestra occupies its place spread over several levels.
Luis Miguel appears around a corner and the angry people don't need more: from where we are, he is just Marvel's Ant-Man, but his fans don't care.
That's why they bring his "cell phone"!
Thousands of erect arms record the multiscreen with their cell phones and their owners shout the songs without paying attention to the stage.
This is not a live concert: it is a live broadcast
perceived through two superimposed screens.
The winds roar and the synths lull.
Luis Miguel takes advantage of the fact that all of Peru chants to skip phrasing and save useless efforts.
He has not greeted or said anything to the public.
He never does.
He doesn't seem to have anything to say, he was practically born on a stage.
With a snap of his hip he handles the show if he gets lost
.
He doesn't take a fan with him: he grabs the official drone in flight and looks seductively at the inserted camera, framing the audience.
It's as if he had put us all on the back of the aircraft.
But I understand why the networks joke that a double has replaced him: it may be some plastic surgery or gastric band operation or both, but his convoluted image is disconcerting.
His immovable smile of a heartthrob rejuvenated by the blow of a chisel makes him look like a ventriloquist's dummy loose in the square.
He sings with short beats and clinches with the distorted pout of a baby trapped by the head in childbirth
.
In less than two hours he briefly reviews his long career, sometimes in soothing medleys.
When I was a kid and Juan Carlos Calderón produced it, he recorded whatever they threw at him, from
Ahora te puede marchar
(
I only want to be with you
by Dusty Springsfield),
Sera que no me amas
(
Blame it on the boogie
by The Jacksons ) or the multipurpose
When the sun is hot
.
Melodies that we would hum distractedly at the bar of a beach bar here are supported by 40,000 throats with the delivery of processions.
Perhaps the most interesting song from his youth is the beautiful
Word of Honor
, a ballad with good chorus counterpoint that was made for him by the former members of La charanga del tio Honorio, those of
Hay que lavalo
.
Surrounded by the air of a big orchestra,
the Mexican divo indulges in two extravagant
post-mortem
duets mid-performance : the first with
Michael Jackson
and the second with
Frank Sinatra
.
In the last third a lavish mariachi bursts in, providing the most vibrant moments:
La Bikina
continues to be the best version in Luismi's entire career, where his exhibitionist voice is more organically integrated and tempered between cadences of a sound melodrama.
In the reinterpretations of his boleros it is better not to go into too much detail: when someone sings "we who love each other so much must separate" without banishing his psychopathic smile, what is least expected is general delirium.
Luis Miguel is a first-class professional and a singer that would be worth listening to in recitals for small venues.
As these macro-concerts are born, they translate into
baths of masses devoted to the adoration of a Sun King eclipsed by roars
.
It is worth highlighting, during the en masse return home, the proliferation of traveling
luismigueles
who, in the streets adjacent to the stadium, sang their own versions to attract the predisposition of the fans, who, drunk with emotion, generously left their coins for these willing prizes of consolation.